The Other Side
by notmanos
Summary: (Circa season 5 timeline) An accident sends Dean crashing into another universe - one where he and Sam are sisters, not brothers. As if that's not weird enough, there's a threat to both dimensions that all the Winchesters must work to fix before Dean can go back home.
1. White Rabbit

_**N.B. : I thought it would be fun to speculate on what a distaff Supernatural would look like. So here's my attempt at it.**_

* * *

 _ **1 – White Rabbit**_

There were days when Dean would have paid anything to know what the hell was going on. This was one of those days.

Bobby had told them some powerfully bad omens had sprung up just outside Silver Springs, Maine. The snowstorm in the middle of June, and the fact that it also hailed gemstones (mostly quartz) caught Sam's interest. This didn't even bring into account the mass bird exodus, which apparently was documented by several people, who thought it was a sign of the end times. So more Lucifer shit? Seemed likely.

They arrived at the outskirts of town around noon, in a densely forested landscape that seemed to be crisscrossed with fire. Only this fire was green and spectral. Dean had put in a call to Cass, but he hadn't responded yet.

He stopped the Impala far away from the flames and got out, Sam following suit. "Um," Dean finally said. "What do we do about this?"

Suddenly there was a loud "boom" that shook the ground hard enough to make them stumble. For a single second, Dean thought he saw a gigantic torso outlined in the high clouds above, but when he blinked, it was gone.

"I'm not sure," Sam admitted. He looked around at the lines of green fire, and said, "If I could get an overhead view, I bet they're spelling out something."

Dean pointed to the nearest towering pine. "Start climbing."

Sam scowled at him, and probably was about to say something smart-assy, but he was cut off by screams.

They both looked off towards the heart of the forest, where the screams seemed to be coming from. It wasn't just one person, it was several, a chorus of fear. Dean groaned inwardly, and grabbed his gun. They were going to have to go in there, weren't they? Damn it. Dean started sidling into the trees, avoiding the fire. It didn't give off any heat, and wasn't catching on any of the trees or underbrush, which was something, but he didn't know what that meant exactly. "Try to avoid that stuff," Sam told him needlessly, following him in.

"What is it?"

"Uh … good question. I have no idea. That's why you should avoid it."

Dean rolled his eyes. Sometimes Sam's role as the "smart one" was really overstated.

They'd gone about twenty five feet when there was another one of those big "booms", but this time it wasn't only the ground that rocked. The trees swayed drunkenly around them, and Dean fell against a trunk, trying to keep his balance. Should they keep going? Well, they didn't have a choice, did they?

As soon as the shaking subsided, he crept onward, gun first, waiting to see some kind of movement. Any kind that wasn't green fire. He wasn't picky. But so far, it was dead still and now dead quiet. That made his hair stand up on the back of his neck. Something bad was going on here. It would have been lovely to know what.

Another "boom", harder this time, and while Dean managed to keep his footing, he heard a sharp crack, and knew a tree was falling before he even saw the movement. It was a huge pine, maybe sixty feet tall, and it appeared to be coming right towards him. "Dean!" Sam shouted. He was sprawled on the ground, having been unable to keep his footing. (Higher center of gravity. Sometimes it paid not to be that tall.)

Dean dove out of the way, and only had a millisecond to realize he was diving right for some of the green fire before he hit it. He braced himself for pain, hoping it wasn't too bad.

It was weird. For a split second, it felt like he had been stretched out on a rack until he was ten miles wide, and suddenly he slammed into a table, which broke under his sudden weight. Dean lay on the floor, dazed, and tried to make sense of his surroundings. It was mostly dark, so that didn't help, but he was pretty sure he was lying on concrete, and there were no trees here, so what the fuck?

"Sam?" he called, hoping against hope he was still there. Dean's eyes adjusted to the dark, and he thought he was in some kind of warehouse. Did he get zapped somewhere else? Was Zachariah fucking with him again?

He'd rolled over onto his side, feeling a twinge in his back, when a female voice asked, "How do you know my name?"

Somehow Dean had held onto his gun, which he mentally patted himself on the back for, and pointed it towards a shadow that coalesced into a person. A tall woman with reddish-brown hair, wearing a t-shirt advertising some roadside diner, and jeans that had seen better years. She was also wearing an army drab coat, and had a gun aimed at him in response. Her hazel eyes were wide, and yet didn't seem fearful, just confused.

"Drop the weapon," a commanding voice insisted. This too was a woman, coming out of the shadows in a shooting stance. She was shorter than the redhead, and seemed to have a slightly more muscular build, although there was something about her face that Dean found familiar. She had short brown hair and sharp green eyes, with a ghostly white scar marring her upper lip. Her outfit of combat boots, worn jeans, black Henley, and brown leather jacket looked really familiar too. For some reason, he noticed right away she was wearing no make up. And oh yeah, she had a look of pure death in her eyes. She wasn't bluffing about shooting him, and he got the sense she could, before he could tighten his finger on the trigger.

Dean stared at her for a moment, before realizing the most bizarre thing: they were both holding Colt 1911's with pearl grips. From the startled look she was now giving him, she must have realized it too. "What the fuck ..?" she said.

"Wait a moment," another female voice said. From out of the shadows emerged an attractive Latina with shoulder length black hair as glossy as a panther's pelt. She was wearing a tailored black suit and white blouse, but what really tipped it for Dean was the rumpled trench coat she was wearing on top of that. "Cass?" he asked, as she approached him.

Cass – female Cass – paused, looking at him with her head cocked to the side in the most Castiel like gesture there ever had been. "Yes, I'm Castiel. And you're Dean Winchester, aren't you?"

"What?" Both the redhead and the butch woman said in unison.

Dean lowered his gun, because if this was Cass – and he was now sure it was; he had a feeling he'd know Cass no matter his vessel – the gun was useless. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, and Cass held out his hand to the side. Dean didn't understand that gesture at first, and then he realized she was giving it to the butch woman, who looked like she was ready to open fire on him. Cass made her stop.

"Explain this," the redhead said. "What's going on?"

"He's from another universe," Cass said. She had a pretty voice, but it was inflection-less. "Another reality. That was that weird energy fluctuation I told you about."

The redhead lowered her gun and put it away, but butchie still had hers out, and was giving him the stink eye. Dean could only think _back at ya, sister_ , but he knew better than to say it. "Is this more of Lucifer's tricks?"

"Or Zachariah's," the brunette snarled.

Cass shook her head. "I have no sense of angel energy here." She crouched down, so she was more or less on Dean's eye level. "What happened to you?"

He told her – Cass – about the omens in Maine and the spectral green fire. At least it wasn't a long story. Dean could see Cass in this strange woman's face, and he found himself wondering if Cass was pretty in every universe he was in. You'd think at some point he'd choose an unattractive vessel. Was Cass a beauty snob?

Cass believed him, but then, Cass could always see the truth in people. Which was why he had to play along if you wanted to lie to him. "Interesting," Cass finally said. "That sounds god-like."

"Which god?" Dean asked. He should have known. The most annoying shit was attributable to gods.

Cass shook her head. "I'd need more information."

"I can look into it," the redhead offered.

"Cass, what the hell is going on?" the butch woman demanded.

Cass held out a hand, and Dean took it. She stood up, pulling Dean to his feet at the same time. "I've told you, there are many parallel realities, many branching off at one decision point or another. He's from one where you were born male."

Dean and the butch woman stared at each other in a similar degree of horror. "What?" they both said.

Cass sighed. "Dean Winchester, meet Samantha and Deeanna Winchester." Sam was the tall redhead, and butchie was … him. Oh, of course.

"I'm a man too?" Sam asked. She seemed amused at the prospect.

"Yeah."

"What am I like?"

Dean wondered if he should bring up the demon blood and psychic crap, then decided the less details, the better. Maybe that didn't happen in this dimension. "An absurdly tall nerd."

"Yeah, that's her," Deeanna said, finally – and reluctantly – holstering her gun.

Sam shot Deeanna a pissy look that he recognized. Apparently gender played no role in that. "At least I'm not a pretty boy."

"Hey," both Deeanna and Dean snapped, then looked at each other. Holy shit, this was weird.

Cass's head suddenly snapped around, and he seemed to be staring at shadows. But Dean assumed from his intensity he was looking through the walls of this abandoned warehouse. "We'd better get going. I'm not the only one who sensed the energy disturbance."

"Fuck," Deeanna said, with a small sigh. "Are you sure we can trust him?"

Cass looked at her. "Of course you can. He's you."

Deeanna gave him a hard glance, which he returned, mainly because he didn't like having his trustworthiness questioned.

Dean decided that Cass was getting sidetracked here. "Can't you just send me back?"

Cass shook her head. "Not until I know where you belong." She then looked disturbed, and glanced back at the warehouse wall before she let out a small scream, and disappeared in a flash of golden light.

Dean knew from experience that was the result of the angel banishment symbol, the one that sent angels off into the cornfield for a while. Deeanna and Sam must have recognized it too, because they both had their guns back out and faced the warehouse door as it was shoved open. Before he knew what he was doing, Dean had his gun out as well. This might not be his universe, but he recognized an attack when he saw it.

Standing in the doorway were many demons, at least ten, possibly as many as fifteen. In the front was a shirtless, scrawny man with several demonic symbol tattoos on his chest and arms. Dean recognized some of them, and thought at least one was a summoning symbol. What kind of idiot did something like that? "Missing your angel, Winchesters? Too bad, so sad."

Deeanna shot him in the head, his brains splattering on his demonic followers standing behind him. It was so sudden and startling Dean almost jumped.

"Eat me, assclown," Deeanna said, taking aim at his followers.

There was a gurgling noise, like a drainpipe backing up, and Dean realized it was laughter as the scrawny guy stood back up, the huge hole in his face healing over as they watched. A tiny amount of black smoke had escaped, but not enough to make any difference. Dean had a sudden, terrible Terminator 2 flashback. Was this fucker liquid metal? "Such a foul mouth with such a pretty face," the man taunted. "I should mess up your face to match."

"Bring it on, Iggy Pop," she replied. Dean saw she had Ruby's knife now in her left hand, gun still in her right. Was it called Ruby's knife here? Maybe Ruby was a guy here. Robert? What was the male equivalent of Ruby?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam had come up beside him. For a moment, he thought maybe she was trying to get a better shooting angle, but then it occurred to him that no, she was trying to stand in front of him. Protect the newcomer on the scene like any other civilian. Apparently the Winchester training was the same, no matter the universe.

"What is this guy?" Dean asked quietly.

"He calls himself Bishop," Sam replied in a whisper. "He's trying to turn himself into a living Hellgate."

Dean had never heard of such a thing. "Is that possible?"

Sam shrugged. "If you do the rituals right. He's close. We don't know what it'll take to kill him at this point, but his disciples are regular demons, so if you have holy water on you, now's the time to use it."

"Of course I have holy water. What kind of hunter do you take me for?" Dean holstered his weapon, and pulled out Ruby's knife. "I also have this."

Sam glanced at it with surprise, recognizing it as the exact same knife her sister was holding. "You had Ryu in your dimension too?"

Interesting. He never would have guessed that. "There he was called Ruby."

Sam looked like she was going to ask follow up questions, but there was no time. Deeanna started shooting as Bishop and his followers suddenly swarmed inside the warehouse, pulling out knives and machetes as they charged them en masse.

Not five minutes in a new universe, and already he was hip deep in a fight. Dean figured that was just his luck, no matter his gender.


	2. Hell's Bells

_**2 – Hell's Bells**_

Dean just waded into the demon scrum, stabbing everyone who wasn't chick him or chick Sam. This turned out surprisingly easy.

Deeanna was a fucking maniac with her (Ryu's) knife, hacking her way through the pile to get to Bishop, and shooting farther away demons in the knee to take them down. Sam was doing that too, although she was using a sawed off full of rock salt and silver shot, which didn't kill demons, but it hurt them like hell. In fact, there were enough of them screaming that the noise soon became deafening, and that was before Sam brought out the holy water. They were Winchesters, all right.

There was no point in finesse. He simply grabbed the closest demons and stabbed. They were unfamiliar with him, had no idea who he was, so their initial attacks on him were direct and stupid. Dean took a punch or two, but after he killed the first four who went after him, the rest of the demons began to treat him with more wariness. Quick glances showed that none had managed to close the distance on Sam, and Deeanna had waded into the center, and stabbed her way through. What she lacked in grace she made up for in sheer brutality.

Bishop noticed him, and although he kept sinking back, farther away from Deeanna and him, he asked, "How the hell are there two of those knives? How's that fair?"

Dean didn't answer, and Deeanna couldn't, so he was just shit out of luck. In fact, his luck was remarkably shitty, as the three of them took out his demon followers in no time, and the scrawny asshole was forced to retreat.

Dean stabbed one of the remaining demons in the chest, while Deeanna got the other one in the face, and Bishop was already out the door. "Catch you on the flip side," he said, before turning and disappearing. Sam chased after him, but not for long.

Dean and Deeanna went around the room stabbing the wounded demons who were on the ground but not dead. Didn't take them long. And Sam came back, shaking her head. "The little weasel escaped again."

"We have to find out what ganks that guy," Deeanna insisted. "Before he completes the ritual."

Sam shrugged, putting away her sawed off. "Bobby's looking into it."

"What is this ritual?" Dean asked. "And how the hell can any living person be a hellgate? That doesn't make sense."

Deeanna frowned at him, putting her knife away. She still didn't trust him, and that was fair, because if their positions were reversed he didn't think he'd fully trust her either. "We're pretty sure he's some kinda demon baby," Sam said. "He was made for this purpose specifically. Even Cass can't smite him. But an Archangel might have the juice."

Deeanna scowled at her sister. "You really want to track that dick Trickster down again? After last time?"

Sam sighed, and Dean recognized it. How freaky. "Dee, it's worth considering."

"Says you. He didn't kill you a million times."

"That happened to you too?" Dean exclaimed. He suddenly felt very sorry for her. "God, that sucked."

Deeanna raised an eyebrow at that. "Did everything that's happened to me happen to you?"

Dean shrugged. "No idea. But it's starting to sound that way." They shared a look best described as foreboding, and said, in unison, "Hell?"

Okay, so they'd both gone there and come back. And they both probably had the same PTSD issues. That was something. Nothing good, but if he wanted to talk to someone else about his experiences, he'd just found the perfect person.

Sam looked between them warily, as if they might have a collective breakdown. This Sam seemed to be slightly mellower than the male version, although maybe he was just seeing her at her most tired. "If you wear the same shoe size, I officially give up."

Deeanna shot her sister a dirty look. "Call Bobby, find out about the green spectral fire thing?"

Sam nodded. "My first thought."

As they walked out of the warehouse, Deeanna said, "I hope Cass is okay."

If he hadn't known this was another version of him before, he knew now.

"She's been banished before," Sam said, reasonably. "She'll just have to find us again."

It was night here, and they seemed to be on a run down pier of some sort. It finally occurred to Dean to ask, "Where are we?"

"Seaside, California," Sam reported. She made a beeline for the car, and he was delighted to see it was the Impala. So Baby made it through the gender shift intact.

"Holy shit. The other side of the country."

"Yeah, you got booted through a different dimension and a few thousand miles extra," Deeanna said.

Dean caught himself heading for the driver's side, where Deeanna was going, and he made himself stop. Looked like his car, but was not his car. He wasn't looking forward to getting into the back seat. "So I guess I'm stuck with you guys until Cass gets back?"

Sam gave him a look best described as deadpan. "Well, we're not driving you to Maine."

"We got us a living hellgate to kill," Deeanna said, getting in the driver's seat.

Dean got in the backseat, a little surprised that the car smelled pretty much the same: like old fast food and gun oil. That hadn't changed either. "I thought you said he was unkillable."

"So far, yeah," Sam admitted. "But there has to be some weakness. Not even angels are completely invincible." She settled in the passenger seat, and already had her phone out, presumably calling Bobby. Was Bobby a woman here too? He tried to picture Bobby's female counterpart, but the beard kept throwing him off.

"Cass figures he might be invincible until the final ritual," Deeanna said, looking at him in the rearview mirror. "But his window of vulnerability might be slight, so we need to strike at the right moment. The problem is, we may not know it until it's right in front of us."

"I don't get the whole hellgate thing," Dean admitted. "How does that work? I mean he what, lets demons enter the world through his body? How?"

Sam held the phone away from her ear, and Dean could hear the laughter. "She says she can't believe two of you could possibly exist without the world exploding."

Deeanna rolled her eyes, and shouted, "Thanks a lot, Bobby."

Sam put the phone back to her ear. "Think how I feel. I'm in the car with both of them."

Deeanna shook her head, and glanced back at Dean. "Cass explained it, and it was boring and super metaphysical. Apparently he becomes only semi-corporeal, yet able to regulate the flow of demons into the outside world. I don't get it all, but it sounds super fucked up and like something we should kill immediately."

"I'm with you there, Deeanna."

"Dee," she replied. "Nobody calls me Deeanna. Except Cass sometimes, and I'd rather she didn't."

He got that. There were a lot of things he wished Cass wouldn't do that he did anyway. Cass was like that.

Sam put her phone away with a sigh. "Bobby's on it. Bobby also wants me to send her a photo of you, because she can't imagine what a male Dee would look like."

Dean didn't know what to say to that, so he simply shrugged.

"Nothin' like me," Dee said, taking a belt from her flask.

Dean stared at her profile. She had a point. But their noses looked vaguely similar. So did their eyes maybe. The jaw line was definitely different.

Dee dropped her flask in her jacket, and started the car. "Should we go ahead and take care of that thing with Root?"

"What about him?" Sam asked, jerking her head in Dean's direction. "Should we drag him into a hunt?"

Dee shrugged. "We could drop him at the motel."

"Hey, I just helped you kill a buttload of demons in there. If there's a hunt, I'm in." Dean insisted.

Dee eyed him in the rearview once more. "Sure you can take it?" At his evil scowl, she smirked.

Jackass. He hoped Cass came back soon, because he couldn't imagine how fucked up things were getting in his real world.

* * *

When it first happened, Sam thought it was an optical illusion. Dean was there, and then he was gone. But the tree crashed down, and Sam couldn't see anything beyond its trunk and the dust cloud it kicked up.

Sam scrambled to his feet and managed to reach the fallen tree before another "boom" shook the ground, and sent branches raining down from above. None of them big enough to hurt him, but they were annoying. This was doubly true when he felt a spider scramble down his face. "Dean!"

There was no answer, but looking over the tree, he saw no sign he got flattened and splattered either, so that was good. But that line of green fire where he had been a minute ago was just gone. It had been there, right? He was sure it had been in a crisscross pattern, but now there was just the one line.

Did that mean something? Sam thought it might, but the fact that Dean seemed to have disappeared was a more pressing concern. He was wondering what he should do when he noticed a man lurking beneath a fir tree. Or was it?

He looked human, but his arms seemed to be covered with long brown feathers, and he was wearing a bear skull on his head, obscuring much of his face. He wore buckskin pants, and some kind of fur shirt … if it was a shirt. Sam couldn't tell from this distance. But you wouldn't think he could both have feathers and fur naturally. Sam raised his gun, but even as he did it, he had a feeling it wouldn't do any good. "You shouldn't be here," the man said. His voice was deep and commanding, and Sam could feel it in his chest like a fishhook. Definitely not human.

"Where's my brother?"

The man's only answer was to wave a hand at him –

-and suddenly Sam was standing in the middle of a street. A horn blared and he cringed as a car screeched to a stop a foot from him. "Get out of the road, asshole!" the driver shouted.

Sam looked around, trying to figure out where the hell he was. Goddamn it, why did every thing they touched lately turn into a nightmare?

* * *

The "thing with Root" turned out to be a haunting, which was easy enough. But maybe not.

It was the vengeful spirit of a woman named Elaine Root, who'd gone full poltergeist and threw a man out a two story window (he lived, but he was still in the hospital). They thought, when they began investigating it, that she was tied to the house where the dude did the involuntary Louganis, but Elaine was the opposite of her surname, in that she seemed to be moving around. Also, she was a murder victim, and while her murderer was dead (died when California had the death penalty), she had been dismembered, and parts of her had never been recovered. So they could burn the body, but there was no telling if that would banish the ghost. In fact, odds were it wouldn't. There were things tying her to this world, and they couldn't burn them all.

"We could trap her," Sam said. "Lure her into an area, capture her in salt."

Dee made a noise Dean recognized as audible doubt. "I'm not crazy about that. She deserves a better end than that."

"I agree, but we don't really have a choice here, do we? She's turned violent. We know how this goes. Once a ghost turns, it doesn't turn back. She'll escalate and eventually kill someone."

"How is she moving around?" Dean chimed in from the backseat. It really felt weird sitting back here.

"Bishop and his people hit her with an unbinding spell," Sam said. "She's the last of five that have been roaming around the city. We got the other four, but Elaine's been the hardest to track down. Because of the infamy of her death and murderer, the location of her body was a secret."

"There's an unbinding spell for ghosts?" He was just learning a shit ton of new stuff here. But was it applicable in his universe? Dean wondered if Cass would know.

Dean caught Dee rolling her eyes at him. "And you're a hunter, huh?"

"This is powerful black magic," Sam said, cutting him a break. Just like regular Sam, when he wasn't in a pissy mood. "If he isn't familiar with a living hellgate, he probably hasn't encountered this either."

Dee shrugged half-heartedly, like she didn't want to give him the benefit of the doubt. "So how do you wanna do this?"

Dean almost answered, before he realized she was talking to Sam. "Her body's in a crypt for the Sanders family in St, James's cemetery. We go there and burn her bones, and summon her into the crypt. We'll have the room lined with salt, and once we're out of there, we'll seal the crypt. She'll be stuck in there, and unable to hurt anyone else."

"Unless someone breaks into the crypt," Dean pointed out. He actually thought it was a solid plan, he just felt like it should be pointed out.

"If they're that much of a dickhead, they're getting what they deserve." Dee replied.

"Besides, if we're lucky, burning her bones will banish her," Sam said.

Dee scoffed. "Yeah, our luck's been great lately. Don't know if you've noticed there's an Apocalypse on."

Sam shook her head. "No need to be a smart ass."

"There's always a need to be a smart ass," Dee replied.

"You got the same deal going?" Dean asked. "The Lucifer and Michael bullshit?"

Dee glanced at him in the rearview again, and Sam turned to glance at him. "They want to wear you and your brother as meatsuits too?" Sam asked. He nodded, and she turned back. "So Winchesters are cursed no matter what universe they're in. Awesome."

"At least it's a constant," Dee said.

Dean nodded. That was true.

St. James's Cemetery was one of those graveyards that was probably really popular come Halloween, as it was going to seed, and had a nice, manageably spooky atmosphere. If it was too far gone, it would have been too scary for the tourists, but right now it was in the sweet spot. Maybe in another few months, it wouldn't be.

Dean had the feeling Dee really didn't want him to help, but he was here, and salting and burning a corpse was a milk run for him, as it was for all hunters worth anything. Besides, he figured with his manly upper body strength, he could pop the crypt door easily.

He never got a chance. Dee simply took the crowbar and did it, like she did it all the time. But she had Linda Hamilton Terminator 2 arms (second reference tonight), and it didn't seem fair. She must have done a lot of pull ups.

The crypt was small, so small that the three of them, along with the coffin in the center, almost took up the available space. Sam outlined the left wall in salt, Dean took the right one, and Dee salted the corpse and covered it in lighter fluid before tossing in a match. The remains roasted nicely, although the smell was terrible.

Sam laid a line of salt in front of the door, while Dean lined the back wall. They now had a perfect, unbroken rectangle of salt. A perfect ghost trap, if they could get Elaine inside it. "Okay, let's summon us an angry spirit," Dee said, turning to Sam.

But Dean noticed the temperature drop, and saw his breath come out in a white cloud. "Don't think we need to bother."

Suddenly, a spectral woman appeared right in front of him. She wore '50's style clothes, and Dean had not expected her hair to be in pigtails. How old was she when she died? He'd mentally calculated she must have been a teenager when he saw the sheer hate in her expression, in her curled up lip and narrowed eyes. She wasn't just an angry ghost, she was full on furious. He could feel her power making the hair on his arms stand on end. She was incredibly fucking dangerous, maybe more than any of them had realized.

And while reaching for the iron crowbar, she plunged an icy hand straight into his chest, and gripped his heart, stopping it dead.


	3. Heartbreaker

_**3 – Heartbreaker**_

It wasn't the first time Dean had his heart stopped by a ghost. He really hoped it was the last.

Dee grabbed the iron bar and swung it through Elaine, making her dissolve. Dean sucked in a breath as the pain still reverberated through his body. "Get him out of here!" Dee shouted, but it was kind of redundant, as Sam had already grabbed his arm, helping him stay upright as she pulled him out of the crypt. He managed not to smear the salt line.

As soon as Dee joined them outside, Elaine returned, but she was still in the crypt. She manifested there, and got stuck inside. She screamed at them as Dee and Dean hefted the crypt door shut. "She really doesn't like men," Sam said. "She was killed by one. Hard not to take that personally."

"Thanks for mentioning that now," he said, bending over and catching his breath. The pain was all but gone now, but man, did he fucking hate it. Sam patted him on the back. This Sam seemed nicer than his brother too, and also smelled better.

After they sealed up the crypt, and started walking back towards the car, Dean finally said, "You didn't tell me she was just a kid when she died."

"How was that relevant?" Dee asked.

Dean shrugged. It just bugged him. Adults dying was bad enough, but kids … kids didn't deserve this shit. "It's not. It's just … I feel bad for the kids."

"Who doesn't?" Sam replied.

"People can suck as much as monsters," Dee said. "Frankly, they're worse, 'cause they don't have an excuse for their behavior."

"Please don't start this again," Sam said, shooting her sister an impatient glance. Clearly one of Dee's canned rants. Dean even recognized the look as a variation of one Sam gave him from time to time.

Dee just rolled her shoulders in a half hearted shrug. Was it possible she was even more cynical than he was? Dean was fairly certain that was impossible, but now he wasn't sure.

He rubbed the cold spot on his chest, where the effect of the ghostly hand lingered. Dean knew it was dangerous to get too cynical, so he tried to fight against it when he could. People were often terrible to each other, so he just tried to focus on the monsters, and the shit he could control. There was so much he couldn't. Being able to hunt down monsters and stop them at least made him feel like he was contributing something to society, even if most people didn't know it. It also gave him a feeling that he wasn't completely fate's bitch. Whether that was ultimately true was a question left for others to ponder.

Once they were back in the car, Dee sighed, and asked, "What do we do now?"

Sam shrugged, and grabbed her laptop. "We keep digging. There has to be a way to stop Bishop."

"If killing him's off the table, what about hurting him?" Dean wondered. "Could we just make him miserable?"

"According to Cass, his ability to feel pain is the first thing he lost," Dee told him. "He's transforming into something barely corporeal. Pain had to go."

"Shit."

"If it was simple, we'd know it was a lie," Sam said, fingers clicking away on her keyboard.

Dean had never heard a better epitaph in his life.

* * *

Sam was glad to discover he was still in Maine, but he'd been sent to Bangor, which was a complete pain in the ass.

Luckily, Bobby knew a hunter who lived in the area, and she was willing to give him a lift back to Silver Springs. Her name was Sylvia, and with a name like that, he expected an older woman, maybe somewhere around Bobby's age. But Sylvia turned out to be a woman in her late twenties, with an anti-possession sigil tattooed on her right shoulder, and an obvious limp that was due to the fact that her left leg was a prosthesis. Sam was dying to ask her how she lost it, but that was rude and probably tacky as well, so he didn't. He could always ask Bobby later.

She'd been in Connecticut, taking out a nest of vampires, but she admitted the omens coming out of Silver Springs were troubling, and she wanted to check them out herself. Sam felt like he had no room to object, so he didn't.

The whole drive up, she was quiet, and he reviewed what little Bobby had emailed him. There wasn't a lot, just a bunch of strange occurrences around Silver Springs going back to colonial times. It wasn't exactly a hotbed of the paranormal, but it did seem to attract its share of weirdness that was right on the bubble of supernatural.

Breaking the awkward silence, Sam mentioned it to her, and wasn't overly shocked that she didn't respond immediately. She was taciturn enough to make Cass seem like a chatterbox. (Speaking of which, where the hell was he?)

Still, she eventually did. "You know your brother's probably dead, right?"

"No he's not," Sam replied, without even thinking about it.

"And why do you say that?"

"'Cause I'd know." And why did he think he would exactly? Sam had no answer for that. He just thought he'd know in his gut if that was true. Which was irrational, stupid, and probably crazy, but fuck it. He was psychic freak boy, right? That had to be good for something.

She gave him hard side eye. She had the type of irises that were such a deep brown they looked black. "I've heard of you Winchesters, you know."

Somehow, that was never a good phrase. "Really? What have you heard?"

"That you have demon powers, and your brother's a maniac."

Sam hissed a sigh through his teeth, willing himself not to get angry. That was easier said than done. "I do not have demon powers, and Dean's not a maniac."

"Are you sure? The stuff I've heard about the pair of you …"

"Bullshit or exaggerations. We're just hunters. Like you."

"Really? I didn't kill Lilith or go to Hell and somehow come back."

He glared at her profile as she drove. He knew he should suck it up, she was a friend of Bobby's, but he wasn't in the mood for this now. "I'm sorry I killed Lilith. I am not sorry Dean got out of Hell."

After a moment, she smirked, and cast an inscrutable glance his way. She was kind of pretty, with delicate features and those wide, dark eyes, but she also carried herself with an icy air, like she knew every single one of your dirty secrets, and wasn't impressed. "You're loyal. That's a good trait to have. Until it kills you, of course."

"Do you have a problem with me or my brother?"

"I have a problem with most hunters. They're usually crazy, drunk, or just broken. If you're really unlucky, a mix of all three."

"Which kind are you?" he shot back.

She smiled. "Oh please, like you haven't guessed? I'm crazy." After a brief pause, she said, "I'm half-assed psychic."

"Which means what?"

"It means I get loose impressions about people or things. I can find demons simply by following my gut. Demons always leave a flat, dark impression, like voids given form. It's really unpleasant."

"I bet." Sam almost hated to ask, but he had to. "Do you have any impressions about Dean?"

"Not yet. But I have a sense you're going to move heaven and earth to find him, and I don't mean that metaphorically. You feel ready to go out and do that by hand if necessary."

Sam nodded. "Accurate."

"You know that makes you crazy, right?"

"I've been called worse."

She grinned in an unsettling way. It made her look a little, well, crazy. "Great. Now we get to find out who's crazier. If we live through this, you're buying me a drink."

Was she flirting with him? Was that a flirt? Sometimes he couldn't tell. Dean was just better at that than he was. Then again, Dean seemed to assume most women – hell, no, people – wanted to jump his bones at some point. He was only right half the time, but he'd managed to spin that into a half-hearted love life. Not that he ever took up any guys on the offer that he knew of, but Dean did seem to get hit on by guys a lot more than he did. He would have wondered why, except Sam had figured it out. It was his macho thing; it screamed butch and trying way too hard to just about everyone. The fact that Dean didn't get that, or refused to get that, was kind of hilarious. But Sam suspected Dean liked the ego stroking of it all. He wouldn't admit it, but at times he was an attention whore.

They were close to Silver Springs now. There was nothing but trees on both sides of the road, towering firs and pines that made you feel like you were in some primeval forest, and he could feel the occasional, sharp trembles in the ground. For a second, he thought he saw a humongous figure in the clouds, but it was gone so fast he wasn't sure. "Did you see that?"

"See what?"

As if in answer to her question, a line of green spectral fire erupted across the road, right in front of them.

Yeah, he wanted to find Dean, but not like this.

* * *

Dean had thought, since they were women, they might have better taste, but nope. They were staying in the same kind of run down, one step above fleabag motel that he and Sam always stayed in. Sam was hard at work, researching, and Dee asked Dean if he wanted to go have a drink. He was totally down for that, so he left with his female half.

But she didn't mean go to a bar. She retrieved a bottle of whiskey out of the trunk of the Impala, and then climbed up to the roof of the motel using the gutter. Dean followed, but wasn't as good as climbing up, and almost brought the rain gutter down. The motel manager wouldn't want them up their, but he'd have to see them, and it wasn't likely.

She handed Dean the bottle while digging in her coat pocket. "There's one bar nearby, but it's full of skeevy old men, and I don't feel like dealing with them tonight," she said, by way of explanation. It was a good one. He hadn't even considered that. But why would he? They weren't going to hit on him.

When she pulled it out of her pocket, at first Dean thought it was a cigarette, but then she lit it with her Zippo, and the smell tipped him off. "Pot too?"

After taking a hit and holding the smoke in as long as she could, she exhaled and held the joint out towards him. "Takes the edge off."

Yeah, it did, usually better than booze. But Dean didn't do it a lot, mainly because it was a hassle. Still, it helped him sleep, especially when he was in a nightmare spiral that wouldn't stop. He took it, gave her the bottle, and had a drag while she opened the whiskey.

It was a flat roof, covered in tar paper, which struck him as an odd thing to do in California. It was black – didn't it hold the heat? She took a swig from the bottle and passed it to him, and he passed back the joint. This was how it worked for the rest of the night. It was a good system.

They enjoyed getting wasted for a full minute of silence, until she finally asked, "Have you figured out what to do about the Apocalypse?"

"Nope. You?"

"Nope. Good talk."

Dean smirked. The pot was making him feel better about everything, even being stuck in this mixed up universe. Even the fact that they mostly had a great view of the cracked parking lot didn't get him down. "So, your Ruby was a guy named Ryu? Did he and Sam ..?"

"Hook up? Yes. Sam and Ruby?"

"Yep. The whole demon blood thing?"

"Yep. So did he kill Lilith, or was Lilith Larry or something?"

"Ha. No, it was Lilith, the white eyed bitch. You kill Azazel?"

"Yellow eyed bastard? Yeah. He kill your Mom?"

Dee finally looked at him. Although her eyes had the slight glazed of being high, there was something focused and sharp about her eyes that Dean found unnerving. He wasn't like that, was he? He hoped not. "No, our Dad. He killed your Mom?"

Dean nodded, before taking a stiff belt of whiskey. Even the pot couldn't make talking about this feel okay. "Yeah. Whole ceiling fire thing." If he thought about it too long, he could still smell her burning flesh, so he tried not to think about it. "Your Mom taught you to be hunters?"

"Yeah. She gave up the life for us, but after Yellow Eyes killed Dad, she got back into it with a vengeance. It became her obsession to track that bastard down. We got caught up in it. In retrospect, it was a shitty way to grow up."

He nodded in agreement. He almost hated to bring it up, he wasn't wasted enough, but he felt compelled to ask. "Did she trade her life for yours?"

The look Dee gave him, she wasn't stoned enough to have this conversation either. "Yeah. Your Dad did the same for you?"

Dean nodded, and they traded the bottle and the joint again. "I need to get way more fucked up," Dee said. He was with her.

After a couple more minutes, he finally had to ask, "You got in a fistfight with Sam?"

She chuckled. "I have gotten in several fistfights with Sam. Why? You think women only have slap fights?"

"No, it's just … we've had some doozies."

"Us too. It's a good thing we're not making money off our looks. I should get a job as a stuntwoman. I can take a punch."

"And dish 'em out."

"Fuckin' right." They shared a fist bump, and he realized she had some impressive calluses on her knuckles. She may have punched things more than he did.

The bottle was half-drained, but Dean wasn't really feeling it yet. Bad memories seemed to have cancelled out a lot of the effects. The joint was gone too, which was a shame. After a long gulf of silence, cut by nothing but distant bass heavy stereos and the occasional car alarm, she asked quietly, "Do you sometimes think if the world wants to burn so bad, maybe it should?"

He groaned slightly. He wasn't sure he could ever picture himself saying that out loud. It felt like surrender. But he nodded, and admitted, "Lately, yeah. I just get tired of fighting all the time. It'd be nice not to for a change, ya know?"

"But what would we do? We're not built for much else."

Wow. Hearing his internal thoughts externalized like this was really depressing. He needed a therapist, or at least a keg. Dean was about to suggest going to the store to pick up some more booze, and maybe something to eat (now the munchies were socking in big time), when he realized there were a shit ton of car alarms going off. It was like a chorus of grasshoppers, only mechanical and annoying as fuck. It was a wave of sound moving towards them.

Dee noticed it to, as she sat forward, moving into a crouch. "What the hell ..?"

The moon was a crescent in the open, empty sky, the one bright spot, but suddenly a shadow passed across it. Their eyes were adjusted enough to the dimness to see that it was a granular black cloud, like a swarm of bees, only bees didn't swarm at night. "Demons," Dean said, horrified. How many were there? And why were they moving like that? He hadn't seen such a dense cloud of them since the devil's gate opened. And it looked like this cloudy swarm was headed right for them.

"Move!" Dee said, going up to the edge of the roof and jumping off, landing on her feet on the hood of a huge SUV. She left a minor dent and some heel scuffs, but who gave a fuck now? Once she was down on the asphalt, he jumped off and landed on the same spot, making the dent that much bigger.

But who the fuck cared? If they all lived through the next few minutes, the driver could bill his insurance.


	4. In My Way

_**4 – In My Way**_

Sylvia slammed the brakes and twisted the wheel, making the car slew around so violently that Sam half expected the car to roll. He braced himself against the ceiling and the dashboard, just in case.

But while the car rocked dangerously, it stayed on its wheels, and they just avoided crossing into the green fire. He couldn't open his door, though, or it would cross the line.

"What in motherfucking hell is that?" Sylvia exclaimed. She seemed more angry than anything else.

"The spectral fire I was telling you about."

"I didn't think you meant actual fire," she said, opening her car door and getting out. Her side was clear.

Sam didn't even know how to respond to that. "What other kind of fire is there?" He slid across to the driver's side and got out her door.

The fire cut the road in half, but left no mark on the pavement. It didn't even cast a shadow. "So Bobby said your brother fell into one of these things? And you're sure he didn't vaporize on contact?"

"Yes. I know the difference between vaporization and disappearance," he said, hoping he did. He was pretty sure.

There was a distant "boom", and the ground trembled, although they were far enough away from it that they barely felt it. Sylvia looked around, and after a moment, asked, "What happens if we follow this line?"

Sam shrugged. "Don't know. Might as well. But keep your distance."

"Don't worry about that, Sparky," she replied, following the line of flame off the road, and into the trees. "I'm staying as far as fuck away from that shit until I know what it is."

"Might want to keep an eye out for falling trees too," he added, following her warily.

Sam hadn't really wanted to go back into the forest with no additional knowledge, but someone had to keep an eye on her. And maybe Bobby would figure out what the hell this was all about before they got grabbed by one of the lines and joined Dean wherever he was.

* * *

They ran inside the motel room, and Dee slammed the door while Dean automatically grabbed the closest, heaviest piece of furniture – a dresser – and dragged it in front of the door.

Sam got up from the table, where she was working on her laptop. "What's going on?"

"Demons," Dee said, tossing Dean a canister of salt. She grabbed one for herself, and they both salted the windows and in front of the door. "Big ass cloud of them, coming this way."

"What? Holy shit, why?" Sam grabbed her own canister of salt, and went to salt the window in the bathroom.

"We don't know, we were just on the roof and saw it coming," Dee said. She discarded the salt canister and pulled out Ryu's knife, prepared to stab the first thing that came through the door.

In their current form, the salt probably wouldn't do any good, but you had to try everything. The arsenal against demons was limited, but that short list got shorter when you were talking about them in their smoke form. You'd think they could do less damage in that form too, and you were right, but only in a hand to hand combat way. Otherwise, they remained deadly. It was one of those unfair things that seemed to crop up so often when you dealt with demons.

Dean hastily drew a devil's trap in front of the door, as it would capture them in smoke form, but what they'd do with them then was up for grabs. Burn that bridge when they crossed it. Sam had her salt and silver shotgun ready to go, and Dean pulled out his own knife.

The windows exploded, sending shards of glass flying through the room, and Dean was sure he got tagged with some. The door took a hit, the dresser jumped, but that was it. They were all tensed, waiting, but it was eerily quiet, save for car alarms going off in the parking lot.

After a moment, Dee asked, "What are they waiting for?"

"Maybe they know they can't get in here," Sam said. After a pause, she added, "Maybe they're getting vessels."

"Shit," Dee cursed, and shouldered the dresser aside before opening the door and heading out. Sam and Dean followed.

The motel was not full, which was great, but there were enough people that this was going to be a mess.

The first two people to attack were a scantily clad woman and a middle aged man with a pot belly that Dean automatically assumed were a hooker and her john. The woman attacked Dee with a knife, and the guy went for Dean, throwing wild punches. He ducked the first and stabbed the guy in his prodigious gut. It killed the demon, and odds were the guy would live, because gut wounds generally took a long time to kill you.

Dee had already disarmed the hooker – her knife was one of those cheapo flick knives anyway – and stabbed her in the chest, avoiding everything vital. Sam shot the desk clerk, who had been coming towards them, but no one else attacked immediately, and looking around to see why was not comforting.

There were seven people standing across the lot from them, just watching with demon black eyes. Mostly men, but two women, and one child, a boy around seven. (That made Dean's stomach clench. Goddamn it with demons taking kids.) "What are you waiting for?" Dee snapped.

Dean actually didn't want to know the answer, because there was no way in hell it was good, but a van pulled into the parking lot right then, and the side door slid open. Inside was Bishop, still shirtless, with black smoke leaking from his mouth and eyes. "Good, you bitches are still here. I had some friends I wanted you to meet."

A blonde woman and man jumped out of the van, and looked so squeaky clean they could have been Mormon missionaries. Two other men jumped out after them, but looked slightly more disreputable. One looked like he'd come straight from hobo camp, and the other looked liked he'd just finished a shift cleaning out a slaughterhouse. "I just want your souls," Bishop said. "They want the rest."

They moved so fast they were in front of them in a blink, and when he took the first punch, Dean realized Bishop had brought ghouls to the party. Motherfucker.

Mormon chick hit like a wrecking ball, and Dean slammed into the room door and fell inside, the ghoul riding him down and immediately trying to take a chomp out of his throat. He got a hand up on her forehead, shoving her away, and punched her in the face, hoping to discourage her. Where the hell did he drop his knife?

Sam pressed her shotgun to the ghoul's head and fired, splattering her brains everywhere. A mild spray of it got on Dean's face.

He kicked off the corpse, just in time for Sam to get tackled by the Mormon dude. She was able to keep a hold of her shotgun, but landed on her face, which wasn't a great fighting position. Dean jumped up and saw where he'd dropped Ruby's knife, grabbed it, and stabbed Mormon boy right in the head.

It wasn't a killing blow, but it stunned him, and he dragged him off Sam as Sam rolled up to her feet, pulled out a .45, and shot him in exactly the same spot where she'd shot his sister (or whatever). Dean yanked his knife out of what was left of the ghoul's skull, and tossed him aside. "Thanks," Sam said, with a nod.

"I owed you one."

Dee had a machete, which she must have been hiding really well, because Dean never saw it, and had already chopped the head off the slaughterhouse janitor. But there weren't just four in the van – there were now two more: one that looked like some frat boy douchebag, and another who looked like a gym rat. The demons had now joined the fight too, trying to overwhelm them with numbers.

He and Sam joined the fight as a demon and a ghoul were attempting to pin Dee's arms to the wall, while another demon punched her in the face. To her credit, she never stopped fighting. Dee nailed the demon in the crotch with her steel toed boots, and he went down screaming – vessel or not, ruptured testicles fucking hurt. Dean pulled out his own .45 and shot the ghoul that had her right arm, putting a neat hole in his skull. Dee, who still had Ryu's dagger, stabbed the demon who was still holding on to her in the stomach. Dean stabbed the demon that was still whimpering on the pavement, and considered it a mercy killing.

"Think fast," Dee said, picking up her fallen machete and lobbing it to Sam, who caught it easily and swung it as a blur of motion closed in on her. Sam managed to slice the head right off the frat boy ghoul without even taking a good look at him. But his head had barely hit the ground before she was tackled by a demon.

Dean meant to help, but he had to stab another demon, and while he was doing that, gym rat ghoul grabbed him and sunk his teeth into his shoulder. He screamed in pain even as he jerked his head back hard and broke the ghoul's nose with the back of his skull. That just made the ghoul dig his teeth in even harder.

Dean rammed the ghoul back into the motel wall hard, and while pain made little black dots explode in front of his eyes, he figured he was just going to have to chop blindly at the ghoul's head until he landed a stunning brain injury. The demon possessed desk clerk stood in front of him, smiling, holding a butcher's knife. "Don't know who you are, pretty boy, but you're hanging with some bad company."

Before dean could tell the demon to go fuck himself, white light exploded out of his mouth and eyes, and he crumpled to the ground, smoke still coming from every orifice. Standing behind him, hand raised, was the female Cass. Dean barely had time to register this before she swung her arm up, and in a flash of silver, stabbed the ghoul straight through the forehead with her angel blade. She twisted it for good measure before yanking it out, and Dean stepped aside as the corpse hit the ground. "Nice timing, Cass." It was kind of funny to think that Cass was still saving his bacon in this universe too.

Cass just gave him a nod of acknowledgement before grabbing the demon Sam was wrestling with and smiting it with just a touch. Now the van screamed out of the lot, and Dean knew why. This attack wasn't going to work with an angel around.

The monsters were all vanquished, save for the possessed boy, whom Cass had grabbed before he ran away. "If I kill the demon in him I may kill him as well," Cass explained, as the demon kid squirmed violently. It was still too weak to break an angel's embrace.

Sam began reciting the exorcism spell, and Cass held him while he thrashed and cursed and told them he was going to kill them as soon as he came back from Hell. Nobody was particularly scared. Finally the demon left in a plume of black smoke that disappeared into the night, and the kid slumped unconscious in Cass's arms. Dean wondered who he was and why he was here, but figured that was a little hypocritical on his part. How much of his childhood had he spent in cheap motels?

A quick glance around showed everybody but Cass was bleeding, but Dean had the worst of it with the ghoul bite. Dee had a bloody nose, and a right eye that was just starting to swell and blacken, and Sam had some scrapes and deep scratches on her cheek and arms, but otherwise, they'd done remarkably well.

Cass blinked out with the kid, and was back a nanosecond later without him. Presumably she put him in his bed, and he'd wake up thinking he had a hell of a nightmare. "How are you?" Dee asked.

Cass touched Dee's forehead, and her injuries were gone. "I'm fine. I sensed that Bishop attempted to channel demons through him."

"And he apparently succeeded," Sam said.

"But it was stupid and reckless," Cass said, now moving to Dean and putting a hand on his hurt shoulder. He looked Cass in her dark eyes, and would swear that Cass recognized him. Like this wasn't their Cass but his Cass, which was impossible … right? Or maybe all Cass's were one Cass … oh no, metaphysical shit. He could feel his head start to hurt, even as the pain in his arm disappeared. "And that might be how we kill him."

She moved on to Sam, as Dee asked, "How so?"

Cass healed Sam with a touch, and explained, "He's too weak. He still hadn't completed the final ritual that will allow him to open Hell in this dimension. If he keeps releasing demons, he will critically weaken what's left of his vessel."

"And then we can gank him," Dean said, nodding as he followed Cass's logic.

"So we have to get him to keep trying to channel demons before he's ready," Dee said. "How do we do that?"

"Full frontal assault," Sam said. "We throw everything we have at him, and force him to call on backup."

Dee scoffed. "We've already done that, and we didn't make a dent."

"Right. We need to bring more with us this time. Bishop has enemies beyond us, right?"

Sam and Dee exchanged an intense look, and Dean knew there was something not being said. Just as Dean looked to Cass for help explaining this, Dee said, "Oh no. Are you fucking crazy? She's just gonna kill us as soon as we show up."

Sam shrugged one shoulder. "She'll try. I don't think she's unreasonable. We just have to convince her it's in her best interest to see Bishop taken off the board. I don't think that'll be so difficult, not after what he did."

Dee rolled her eyes. "I still don't get how you can be so trusting after everything we've been through."

Dean raised his hand. "Um, what are we talking about?"

Not surprisingly, it was Cass who answered. "The Vampire Queen."

Dean just stared at her. The what now?


	5. Advice and Vices

_**5 – Advice and Vices**_

The Vampire Queen was a vamp who had the inexplicable name of Amaranth, but was just referred to as the Queen by most monsters. She was supposedly the mother of all vampires, and the most powerful of them all. As she went, vampires went. She also absolutely hated the Winchesters.

But she hated Bishop too, because for part of the early ritual, he needed a few gallons of vamp blood, and slaughtered a couple of nests with high profile vampires – i.e. friends of the Queen – so Bishop was on her shit list. Whether that would motivate her to help the Winchester sisters kill Bishop was another story. As Dee said, it came down to who she wanted to see dead more, and right now, it seemed like a tie.

Sam was insistent this was their best move, and Cass reluctantly agreed. She could bring a lot to the fight, but she was just one angel, and currently cut off from Heaven due to the whole fighting the Apocalypse thing, so not running at full capacity. Dean saw Dee's side of it, as it screamed suicide. And also, even if the Queen went along with it, she would double cross them at the first opportunity. If there was a way to kill two enemies with one stone, she would take it.

But that was kind of beside the point. Of course the Queen wanted to kill them, and would try to find a way regardless of whether she helped them or not. They really didn't have a choice. This was the only Hail Mary pass they had.

Cass did have one suggestion, if all else failed: making an appeal to Heaven. There was no way they'd want a living hellgate on Earth, even with an Apocalypse on the horizon. They might help vanquish it. What they would do to her was unknown. It was possible they'd simply ignore her. Unlikely, but possible.

Dee didn't like that, and Dean didn't like it either. Sam didn't seem thrilled, and Cass remained stoic. He/she was a brave soldier, no matter what. So while they were all pretending they had a choice, they didn't. They were going to have to visit the Queen and make an appeal.

Since the sisters wanted to have a private discussion – argument – about strategy, Dean decided to make a run to the convenience store on the corner, and enlisted Cass's help. Because it was hardly a block, they walked, as zapping there seemed lazy. Also, Dean had some questions for her. "So, uh, angels don't have genders, do they?"

She gave him a patient, world weary look his Cass had given him several times. "No. Some angels do develop affinities for one gender over another, but that's more of a Human/animal thing."

Dean kind of already knew that in his head, but he always saw Cass as Jimmy, therefore a guy, not a genderless cosmic energy being. Which was wrong, because that's totally what he – She? It? – was. Which brought up another question. "Who's your vessel?"

Cass smiled faintly. "Gabriela Acosta-Nieves. Very devout. She almost became a nun, but she had some … issues that prevented her."

"Issues?"

Cass tilted her head, like she was afraid of airing her vessel's dirty laundry, but after a moment, she forged ahead. "She had struggled most of her life with mental illness. Upon becoming a vessel for me, I have healed her."

"Good. But she can hardly enjoy that, can she? You're in there."

"For a brief time, my vessel was free of me."

"When your bosses decided to ass ream you in Heaven? That happened here too, huh?"

"Apparently. She was very … distressed being separated from me. Life wasn't easy for her. Being my vessel makes her feel like she has a divine purpose."

Well, that was one way to look at it. Dean had never quite grasped why anyone would want to be an angelic vessel, as it just didn't seem like the vessel got anything out of it. How bad did your life have to be that being an angel condom sounded like a great deal? "What does she think about your rebellion?"

"She thinks I'm an angel, therefore I know what I'm doing."

Blind faith too? Wow. Cass had found the perfect vessel here. Dean mentally chided himself for being a judgmental douchebag. Cass had said she had a hard life, and he really didn't want to know what angels considered hard. Maybe this was the answers to all her prayers, and a way out of whatever personal hell she was trapped in. He couldn't say, and he had no right to judge her. Look what a wonderful disaster he'd made of his life. Maybe, at one of his lowest moments, if an angel had showed up and offered to take over the rest of his life, he may have said yes too, especially if he didn't know what dicks most of them were. "Do you?"

Cass smiled. "We're making it up as we go along, right?"

Dean couldn't help but smile in return. There was the Winchester family motto. "Yep."

Dean belatedly realized he had no idea if Dee and Sam drank beer or something else – although he knew Dee drank whiskey – so he went ahead and bought some beer and some road food snacks that he just assumed they'd eat (and if not, he would happily eat them). Because of his munchies, he left the store eating a candy bar. Cass showed she wasn't completely unaware of the point of this trip when she asked, "Do you think they've stopped arguing?"

Dean shrugged. "Depends. How tired are they? That usually effects how willing Sam and I are to argue for a long time."

"Does it make it better or worse?"

"That depends too."

Cass gave him that "you humans are crazy" look that he'd seen a lot, when Cass suddenly stopped walking and stared dead ahead. Dean halted and did the same, and saw, standing in the center of the sidewalk, a woman far too elegantly dressed for this place and this time of night.

She was in her forties, mid to late, but she looked damn good for it. In a way she reminded him both of Helen Mirren and Sigourney Weaver, hot cougars he'd definitely be into. She had short, icy blonde hair cut to look sophisticated and expensive, and wore a black dress that just screamed money and class, and hugged her curves to boot. The only color came from a blood red shawl draped over her shoulders. "Castiel, stepping out on Dee, are we? I can see why. What's your name, boy toy?" She had a British accent, and a voice as smooth as honey, but her eyes were ice blue and flashed him a look sharp enough to cut.

"Who the hell are you?" Dean wondered. Vampire Queen? She had a queen-ish air about her, and those bracelets she wore looked like they had real diamonds. He couldn't imagine how many hundreds of thousands of dollars were on her wrists, and how she'd dare wear them at this time of night in this neighborhood. Unless she could kick the ass of all comers.

"What do you want, Crowley?" Cass asked, and just from her tone of voice, Dean knew the angel blade was out.

"Crowley?" he exclaimed, unable to stop himself. "You're Crowley?" He couldn't hold back the laughing fit either.

Crowley arched a single eyebrow at him, not amused. This universe's Crowley was uncomfortably hot. He could have been a silver fox of a Bond girl, or maybe a villain. "Wasted too? Why Cass, do you have to roofie men for attention? I'd never have guessed."

Cass ignored that. "Why are you here?"

"Fine, be that way. You angels have no social graces whatsoever. I suppose you and the weird sisters are aware Bishop opened his gate for a moment?"

"More than aware. Why do you care?"

Dean was still laughing, and Crowley shot him a cutting look, like maybe she thought he was faking or just crazy. "Because, if that tosser can control the gates of Hell, he will become a de facto ruler, and I'm not prepared to share my throne with a jumped up little arsehole."

Dean finally got his giggles under control, and felt very adult for managing it. "So you wanna help us cap this asshat too?"

Crowley stared at him like she could almost seem him through a thick fog. "Who is this us you speak of?"

"This is Dean Winchester, Dee from an alternate dimension," Cass said.

"I prefer to think of it the other way around."

Crowley smirked, looked like she was about to win the battle against a laugh, then lost. She guffawed in a very unsophisticated manner, and then covered her mouth with her hand. She had glossy black nails, and a fussily perfect manicure. "Oh dear. I'd ask how that happened, but I really don't care. That's delightful. You're a bit prettier than she is, you know that?"

Dean frowned. "How do you think you can help us, Crowley?"

"You're working with Tweedledee and Tweedledum, are you? Oh, this is wonderful. Is there a male Sam somewhere around here? I'd love to meet him. Is he a giraffe too?"

Cass stepped forward, her grim, take no shit face on. "How do you propose to help us, Crowley? And what's the cost?"

She waved her hand, airily dismissing the thought. "No cost, I just want to see this bloody berk crushed like the gnat he is. But I'm afraid I can't offer much."

"Then what good are you?" Dean asked. He knew that would make his Crowley angry, and he doubted that was any different here.

It wasn't. Hate flared in her eyes before she smothered it, but for a single second, Dean thought he saw her eyes flash red. "I may not be the Queen of Hell just yet, but I'd advise you to take a more respectful tone, boy, or I'll use your guts for garters."

"You can't discourage the demons using him as a gateway?" Cass asked, ignoring the threat to Dean. Probably because Crowley couldn't do jack shit while Cass was here. Impotent threatening was all that was on the table with an angel within reach.

Crowley shook her head. "They're idiots who feel some sense of gratitude for being freed."

Cass's tilted head straightened, and Dean knew from experience that meant he'd just had an idea. "Can you make them stampede?"

Crowley's regal forehead furrowed in confusion. "What?"

"At a predetermined signal, could you tell all the demons in Hell to push for the exit? So when Bishop thinks he's releasing twenty, he's releasing two hundred?"

"You want to flood the world with demons?"

"I want to overwhelm Bishop. If we can kill him, the gate collapses, and the demons won't be able to cross."

Crowley considered it a moment. "Some will get through."

"Leave that to me," Cass said. "Can you do it?"

She rolled her eyes. "Darling, getting demons to stampede is as easy as getting Humans to form ignorant mobs. Give me a genuine challenge."

Cass nodded. "I'll summon you when we've worked out the time."

Crowley scowled at her. "I'm what, your serving wench? Don't strain yourself." And Crowley was simply gone, the one elegant spot in the entire neighborhood disappeared in a blink.

"Wow. Our Crowley's a fussy Brit too," Dean said. "But a guy. Not nearly as pretty."

"This annoying?"

"At least. Possibly more so."

Cass shook her head. "Not possible."

They returned to the motel to find ambulances in the parking lot, loading up survivors of the demon battle, and discovered they had missed the sibling fight, which was exactly what they intended. Sam and Dee happily helped themselves to beers while Cass told them about Crowley's offer. They seemed as thrilled by working with Crowley here as he and Sam did over in the other universe.

They had worked out a rudimentary plan for approaching the Vampire Queen, but Dee clearly wasn't happy with it. But it was what they had, so they were going with it. Cass blinked out briefly, to find the location of the Vampire Queen, and while Dean took a moment to help himself to a beer and some chips, Dee asked, "You're not taking the angel express out of here? You could, you know. This isn't your fight."

Dean shrugged. "I know. But I kinda want to see this through. You're like the sisters I never had, right? So count me in."

Sam and Dee exchanged a look he knew meant they thought he was slightly unhinged, but that was okay. He probably was. But this was like watching a movie, and he could hardly leave before the final act, could he? It'd bug him if he did. He wanted to see how this ended.

Cass popped back into being in the center of the room. "The Vampire Queen's in Los Angeles."

"Of course she is," Sam said, with a small sigh. She shrugged on her coat, while Dee put her beer aside and stood up. Dean gulped down the rest of his beer, which wasn't much.

They stood around Cass, who grabbed Sam and Dee's arms, while Sam grabbed Dean's arm. In a moment, the motel room's dingy walls were replaced with thick shadows and multicolored gel lights, and a pounding, almost mechanical beat that made Dean's head hurt. "Where the fuck are we?" he shouted, trying to be heard over the music.

"Floodland," Cass shouted back. Dean could barely hear her. "It's an industrial club owned by the Queen."

Looking around, Dean saw so many Goths with pasty skin and blood red mouths, he wondered how they were supposed to tell the real vamps from the wannabes. He was trying to decide if he'd be okay just decapitating everyone when the four of them were surrounded by men built like the bastard children of linebackers and refrigerators, walls of muscles with legs and shoulders as broad as a door. They could have been the club's bouncers, but the red gel lights revealed their jagged teeth. "What are you doing here with your pet angel, Winchester scum? Felt like dying tonight?"

Oh good, at least they were expected.


	6. Zero

_**6 – Zero**_

"We're just here to talk," Sam shouted to the big ass vampire bouncers around them. "We're not here to fight."

One of the goons grabbed Dee by the back of the neck, and said, "Do you think you'll have a chance to fight, vampire murderer?"

Cass reacted first, holding her hand right up to the vampire's face, and letting it just start to glow. If Cass let it go, the vampire would crisp up nicely. The vamp knew it, and gave Cass an ugly scowl before letting Dee go. Dee jerked away, and gave him the finger. "The Queen will want to see us," Dee said.

"So she can rip out your throats personally? Yeah, I believe that," one of the goons said. "Let's go, blood bags."

They were hustled along roughly, although no one touched Cass (because she could roast them where they stood). They were shoved through the club until they were escorted into a back room that gave way to a small warren of hallways, and the music was blissfully muffled, save for the thudding bass.

Eventually they were pushed (all but Cass) into what Dean would have called the champagne room if this was a strip club. It was a small room with leather couches, mirrored walls, and a plush black carpet that made him think of an oil spill. There was an ornate chair on a raised platform near the back of the room, and sitting upon the throne was a beautiful bronze skinned woman in a tight golden dress, a goblet of blood in one hand, her feet up on the back of a man who was on all fours in front of her, a living ottoman, with an IV tube in his carotid artery. Dean would have been concerned about him if he didn't look totally into this. He was also wearing leather shorts and a halter, and had a black leather gimp mask on, but his blue eyes were sparkly. "Oh look, the hunter bitches," she said, almost idly, as if she was already bored. Her eyes settled on Dean, and she smiled. "Oh goody, you brought me a snack."

"We want to talk," Cass insisted.

The Queen's eyes glided over towards her. "Since when do I talk to the likes of you?"

"Would you rather fight?" Cass kept her expression totally neutral, but Dean knew the lack of effect was actually her version of swagger. Vampire Queen or not, she was no match against an angel, and everyone in the room knew it.

The Queen sneered at Cass, not appreciating the cockiness. "I have nothing to say to any of you, beyond get the hell out of my club."

"We're trying to kill Bishop," Dee said. "We thought you might want in."

"Bishop," she said, spitting the word out like a curse. Dean honestly thought it was just her plunging neckline, but he was starting to realize she was strangely magnetic. You kind of wanted to be near her, and just maybe act as her living footstool. Clearly Queen Vampire had certain perks. "I have my own plans for him. I hardly need your help."

"But you do," Sam said. "Right now he's nearly invulnerable. You can't hurt him any more than we can. But we have a way to make him vulnerable, and killable."

She arched an eyebrow, so far unimpressed by their presentation. "So why haven't you?"

"We get one shot at this," Dee replied. "There's no room for errors. The more people we have gunning for his ass, the better."

"Do you want him off the map, or do you want him to open the door to his demon friends and decimate your food supply?" Sam added.

She still looked unimpressed and bored. Dean was starting to feel like this was a plan down the toilet. Maybe they'd just have to rely on Crowley alone. And how terrible was that?

* * *

The "booms" got sharper the closer they got to ground zero, but Sam didn't actually know where that was, or how close they were to it. All he knew was they were closer.

They'd managed to avoid the spectral fire lines and falling trees, but the trees were really bothering him. The farther they went, the closer to the booms, and the more dense the trees, which were increasingly affected by the tremors. Branches started falling, but before long it was trees. Small ones at first, but gradually bigger. They'd managed to avoid them so far, but the closer they got, the closer the falling trees got to them. And there was no end to the line in sight.

Finally, when a fifty foot pine fell about five feet away from them, Sam stopped and said, "We should quit."

Sylvia looked back at him. "You chickening out?" Her eyes then focused on something behind him, and she pulled her gun out.

Sam spun, instantly defensive, going for his own gun, but stopped as soon as he saw who it was. Castiel had popped up a couple feet away. He looked around with a befuddled expression, and said, "We shouldn't be here."

"Who the hell are you?" Sylvia demanded.

Sam held out a hand. "Stop! He's a friend. This is Castiel, the guy I called earlier."

Cass's gaze encompassed Sylvia and her gun, but he wasn't bothered by either. Why would he be?

"Do you know what these are?" Sam asked, pointing at the line of spectral fire.

"Cracks in the dimensional fabric. Someone's trying to break open multiple dimensions at once. Someone else is trying to stop them."

"What?" Sylvia asked. "How the hell do you know that?"

There was another boom, and Sam asked, "So it's a battle? Someone's fighting someone else?"

Cass nodded. "Gods. We really shouldn't be here."

"Which gods?" Sam asked. If he knew who they were, maybe there was a way to shut them down.

"Stop ignoring me," Sylvia snapped.

Sam glanced back at her impatiently, and said, "He's an angel."

She stared at him in disbelief. "Angels wear trench coats?"

He could only shrug. This one did.

Cass came to stand between him and Sylvia, and repeated, "We shouldn't be here."

In the blink of an eye, they were standing in the road near Sylvia's car. They were well away from the spectral fire line. "Goddamn it!" Sylvia erupted. "Do you know how long we've been walking? You put us back at square one!"

Cass seemed unmoved by her anger. "Those are breaks in reality. If you touch one, you're pulled in."

"Dean did," Sam said. "So how do we get him back?"

Cass opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, and stared at the line of fire. He then did something Sam had never heard him do before: he cursed. "Shit."

Yeah, that about summed it up.

* * *

Finally, after half a dozen empty threats, delivered with that same bored drawl, the Vampire Queen decided to take them seriously.

This wasn't much better, as she glared at them with total contempt, and coming from a vampire queen, that stung. Dean thought it didn't help that she was pretty, because she was, and that was kind of distracting. Then he saw the teeth, and he snapped right out of it.

Dee was wisely letting Sam do most of the talking, as Sam managed to keep an even temper, and Dee looked like she was struggling to keep her anger from getting the best of her. Dean wondered if he was like that, then realized how stupid a question that was. Of course he was like that. Sometimes he clamped down so tightly on his rage he could feel his back molars starting to crumble.

"So let me get this straight," the Queen said, sitting forward and putting her goblet down. "You want me to throw my people into a demon meat grinder so you can kill that bastard, and release more demons into the world at the same time?"

"The demons won't get past me," Cass said.

She gave Cass her contemptuous look, but it was mellowed slightly, probably because if Cass wanted to take her out, she could. "So you say."

"Are you saying vampires aren't strong enough to take on demons?" Dee asked, and Dean had to swallow a smile. Oh, she wasn't going to like that.

Her scowl was an ugly thing, and her eyes almost lit up with rage. "Are you that much of a moron, Winchester? Do you think I'd fall for such a transparent trap?"

"Surely there are vampires who have lived past their usefulness to you," Sam said. "Ones you'd never miss."

She rolled her mahogany colored eyes, and for a second she could have been a bratty teenager and not an ageless vampire queen. "You saw the club, didn't you? So many poseurs. They were given eternal life and don't know what to do with it."

"Except die for their Queen?" Cass said.

That was diabolical, and Dean couldn't believe she was suggesting it. Especially since Dean had just been about to say that.

The Queen raised an eyebrow at that. "Tempting. I'll consider it." She then waved her hand once, and that was apparently the signal for her men to get them out of here, as the walking muscles were suddenly surrounding them again, herding them towards the door. Once again, Cass was avoided.

"I'll be in touch," Cass said, over her shoulder. It sounded like a threat.

They were escorted through narrow corridors until they were pushed (all but Cass) out into the parking lot behind the club. Even here, Dean could hear the mechanical thudding of the music. It seemed like it was weaponized, designed only to hurt. Maybe it was.

"Well, we're not dead, so I guess we count that as a win," Sam said, after the vamp goons were gone.

Dee nodded. "Living usually gets a check mark in my book."

"The vampires really seemed to dislike you," Cass said to Dee. There was a question in there, but you had to know Cass to hear it.

Dee shrugged half-heartedly, looking away. "Dunno."

Sam rolled her eyes. "I got jumped by some vamps in Chicago, who decided to capture me and use me to feed some newbies. Dee killed her way through the nest to get to me. It was a bloodbath."

"You'd have done the same for me," Dee replied.

"Sure, but you're the one on the vamp's shit list."

Dean wasn't a hundred percent certain, but he was pretty sure he'd had a similar conversation with Sam once. Only it wasn't Chicago, it was Washington D.C., but same story. He had no idea vamps would take that kind of thing personally, but yeah, that made sense.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean thought he saw a green glimmer, and turned to look. The parking lot wasn't lit well, but would a vampire club have lots a light? You wouldn't think so.

"Bishop shouldn't be too hard to find, he thinks he's invulnerable," Cass said. "We just need to pick a time to strike."

The glimmering continued, and Dean walked towards it. He had to look over the top of a Toyota to see what it was, and he was pleasantly surprised. "Hey, it's one of those green fire things."

Dee, Sam, and Cass joined him. There was a single line of green spectral fire cutting from just beyond the wheel well of the Toyota, to a Jeep near the back. It was smaller than any of the lines they found in the woods, but otherwise the same. See through emerald flames that gave off no heat, and little light.

"Those are dimensional fractures," Cass said. "Someone's trying to break them open."

"Why?" Dee asked.

Cass shrugged. "No idea. It's not good."

"Who or what could do something like that?" Sam asked.

"Gods. This is definitely god work. I'm not sure which one."

"If I walked into it, would it take me back to my dimension?" Dean asked. It would be a super easy solution to everything.

"Maybe. But probably not. Dimensional cracking is more of an art than a science."

"Goddamn it. I was afraid you were gonna say something like that." Couldn't there be an easy answer to something for once? This really didn't seem fair.

Sam sighed, looking over the spectral fire. "How do we fix this?"

Cass grimaced, and almost looked embarrassed. "Until we know the god responsible, we can't. And even then, it will be difficult."

"Awesome," both Dee and Dean said, mostly in unison.

This tracked with his luck. But on the bright side, he didn't need Cass to zap him to Maine anymore. But if the lines had spread to here, what did that mean for this dimension? And his home one?

At least Murphy's Law was the one constant in Dean's life. Somehow, that wasn't very comforting.

* * *

"Where did Dean get pulled into one?" Cass asked, his brow furrowed in concern.

Sam looked over the forest, trying to guess. They were what, five miles from where they entered the forest? Six? While he was deciding, he saw something rise out of the trees.

He thought they were birds at first, but that just made Sam acutely aware that most of the birds had already fled, upset by all the dimensional rupturing. As the black cloud soared off into the sky, he realized it could only be one thing. "How many demons is that?"

Cass watched, just as concerned as Sam was. "Maybe a dozen. Possibly more."

"And they're headed towards town," Sylvia said, racing to her car. "Shit."

"Cass, go ahead, we'll meet you there," Sam said, slipping into the back seat to avoid the green fire near the passenger side door. Cass had already disappeared, and if they were lucky, he'd get all the demons before they could find townsfolk to inhabit.

"Where the hell did they come from?" Sylvia asked, starting the car so violently she almost flooded it. "Another dimension?"

"That'd be my guess. If things can slip through, they can come out as well." But demons from another dimension would be just like the demons from their dimension, right?

Suddenly, Sam wasn't sure, and he had a bad feeling about all of this.


	7. I Am The Least Of Your Problems

_**7 – I Am The Least Of Your Problems**_

Cass got most of the demons before they arrived, but there were still a couple left by the time Sam and Sylvia showed up, and it seemed they decided that fleeing the angel in terror was the better part of valor. They knew this because one of the fleeing demons crashed into their car.

It was in a guy who looked like he just came from lumberjack camp. Plaid shirt, hat with ear flaps, suspenders, pretty much the whole stereotypical package, simply missing an axe. His face also had the windburn and broken blood vessels of a heavy drinker, and someone who was out in the elements a lot. His eyes were black, and as he slammed onto the hood of Sylvia's Charger, he glared at them with contempt, like they were the ones who just darted out in the middle of the road.

Sylvia put the car in park and jumped out. "You demonic son of a – "

She got no farther, as he held out his hand and she went flying down the road. Goddamn it, Sam hated the ones with powers.

He popped open his door, and as he got out, he flung holy water towards its face. It hit and burned, and the demon reeled, grabbing his face. He snarled and probably was about to send him flying, except Cass was suddenly behind him now, and as he turned his gaze on Sam, Cass put a hand on the back of the demon's head, and his eyes lit up white as Cass killed the demon within.

Demon taken care of, Sam went back to Sylvia, who was still in the process of picking herself up off the road. He gave her a hand up, and she groused. "I hate motherfucking demons."

He didn't respond to that, but who didn't. (Well, Crowley probably.) Cass joined them, and Sam really didn't like how intense he looked. Tense Cass was never good. "I didn't get them all. Some of them are different."

Shit. This was exactly what Sam was afraid of.

"What do you mean they're different?" Sylvia asked. After a pause, she added, "Why the hell are you wearing a trench coat?"

Cass seemed slightly baffled by the sudden subject turn. Sam was glad he wasn't alone in being puzzled by Sylvia. "My vessel was wearing it." His gaze shifted to Sam. "I tried to smite a couple of them, and they resisted."

"How?"

Cass shook his head. "I don't know. No demon should be strong enough to do that. They escaped before I could use my blade."

"So these are superpowered demons?" Sylvia asked. "Does the same old shit still affect them? Salt, holy water?"

Cass shrugged. "I have no idea. Sam, do you have the knife?"

He patted his pockets in a search before remembering where it was. "Damn it. Dean had it."

Cass sighed, and looked away, but Sam still caught his annoyed expression. "Of course he did."

"I have knives if you guys need 'em," Sylvia said. "But how much good are they gonna do?"

There was another boom, but this one was much closer, and it not only shook the ground, but the glass in shop windows jiggled like they were made of gelatin. Suddenly there were screams, farther up the road. "Have the gods moved their fight into town?" Sam was really getting sick of this avalanche of bad shit. There had to be a stopping point, right? Oh, how naïve was he to think there was? At the end of all of this, Lucifer wanted to possess him. If that wasn't bottom of the barrel bad, he didn't want to know what was.

"It isn't the gods," Cass said, looking off into the distance.

Sam really didn't want to ask. He wanted to get back in the car and chase energy lines again, if only because it held the illusion of forward progress. But he had no choice. "Then what is it?"

They hastily had to move out of the way, as cars started screaming past them at speeds that were, at best, ill advised. It became obvious why in three seconds.

At first, Sam wasn't sure what he was looking at. His mind went to elephant, but it didn't look right, and it was too big. Also, elephants weren't green.

It was a twenty foot high quadruped, with leathery skin and a face that was mostly mouth, big enough to park a car in, and had three rows of sharp teeth. It had a long, flexible neck that was kind of swan-like, only scaled and grotesque. The two black blobs on the very top of its head were probably eyes. Its body was blockish, square, sort of PT Cruiser-ish, and it lurched drunkenly down the middle of the street, squashing parked cars and snapping at people and light posts with equal fervor, as if it didn't know what was edible, but was willing to try everything. The closer it got, the more the ground shook. It must have weighed a ton or two.

"What the ever loving fuck is that?" Sylvia exclaimed.

"Uhh … that isn't a demon from another dimension, is it?" Sam wondered.

"I don't know," Cass said.

They watched it pick up a car in its mouth and throw it through a shop. Not even the window; the entire storefront. It hardly put any effort into it at all.

"This … this is fucking bananas," Sylvia said. "How the hell are we supposed to fight that thing?"

That was an excellent question. Sam wished he had an answer for her beyond Godzilla.

* * *

They went back to the motel and got a few hours shut eye, because they weren't attacking Bishop tonight. Dee wanted to, but Cass told her she needed to get some rest, and she acquiesced. Fighting with Cass was a no win scenario most of the time, so he totally got it.

Dean was more exhausted than he thought, but hey, no one said falling through dimensions was easy. But after five hours, he was up and restless again. There was a diner up the street, and he went there to caffeinate.

He'd barely ordered and started in on his first cup of coffee when Cass suddenly appeared in the seat across from him. Dean had just looked away for a second, and then there she was. You'd think he'd be used to it by now, since Cass was always pulling this shit on him, but nope. He jumped, and almost spilled coffee on himself. "You're concerned about your home dimension," she said.

Dean put his coffee cup down, and almost slopped some over the side. "Yeah. Hard not to be. Is this dimensional fracture shit going to hurt it?"

She tilted her head as she thought about it. "It might. It depends on who's doing it, why, and how long this lasts. I'd say this dimension has at least seventy two hours before it's destroyed."

She said it so casually, he almost let it go right past him. "Pardon me? This dimension could be destroyed?"

"They could all be destroyed. They could collapse into one single reality."

This was one of those moments when he just wanted to slam his head on the table until he passed out. How did Cass think that was so inconsequential as to not mention it? Maybe he should slam her head on the table. It wouldn't hurt her. Angels seemed to be made of cement. "And you didn't mention this why?"

"There's nothing we can do about it at the moment. No sense in worrying about something we can do nothing to change."

Dean almost laughed. This was beautiful. "Who could change it?"

"Whatever gods are attempting to rip reality apart."

"And who's that?"

Cass shook her head. "No idea. There's many that could be doing it. Since this isn't where the battle began, I have no way of knowing."

"Where did the battle begin? My dimension?"

"It's possible, since you were the first thing I know of that fell through."

Okay, great. Somehow he had to solve a problem over there from here. How did you do that? "Can we get a message there?"

Cass gave him the sad puppy dog look he'd seen enough to hate. Cass was pitying him, possibly for his ignorance, possibly because he was a stupid human who had no grasp of cosmic things. "When we don't know which breach leads to your dimension? No."

"So we're just relying on them to figure that out?"

"I'm there, right?" Cass asked. "I should be able to put it together."

Dean nodded, a little relieved. Also, Sam was pretty smart, so he might be able to figure it out. In time? "What happens if everything collapses into one reality? Does that mean me and Sam will have to live with a whole bunch of other Sams and Deans?"

"Yes, but the strain of all realities collapsing would probably collapse this final reality too, so you wouldn't have to live with them long."

"Fantastic." He was rubbing the sudden ache in his forehead when the waitress brought his food. She asked Cass if she wanted anything, and she replied, with the usual Cass bluntness, that she didn't eat. The waitress left looking confused.

Now that gave Dean an interesting thought. "There will be multiple yous, won't there?"

"There would be. That would be a unique experience. While it lasted."

Dean thought he'd lost his appetite with all this end of the world talk, but he was wrong. He'd eaten about half his eggs while trying to imagine a thousand Cass's meeting each other, and couldn't manage it. He bet they'd all get along great. And that's when it occurred to him. "Hey. The fact that you're here too, does that mean you were always meant to rescue me from Hell?"

Cass cocked her head curiously. "It's probably just coincidence."

He shook his head. "Don't think so."

"Angels are agents of fate. We make things happen. But fate does not act upon us."

"Lucifer and Michael?"

"The exception that proves the rule."

Dean gave Cass a skeptical look. "Not buying it. This feels like fate, man. And this is from a guy who fucking hates it."

Cass let out a small, disbelieving laugh. It almost sounded forced. "I'm a soldier, Dean. I don't have a destiny."

"Yeah, I've been saying that my whole life, and look where I am."

A troubled look passed over Cass's face, and just from the amount of worry in it, he realized Cass had considered this before.

No wonder Cass wanted to help them thwart destiny. He (she) was afraid he was as much a bitch to it as the Winchesters.

It was good to know they were all in the same boat, even if it was sinking.

* * *

They came up with a hasty plan. It wasn't very good, and Sam could imagine them all dying horribly as it all went wrong, but sometimes you just had to risk it, right?

Since Sylvia refused to give up her car, Sam had to pick one of the ones not crushed yet. He found a behemoth SUV that would be perfect for the job. Of course he had to break the driver's side window to get in and hotwire the thing, but it was going to be destroyed anyway. In the long run, it didn't matter.

As soon as he got it started, he put on his seat belt, and checked the airbag's position. This was going to hurt, wasn't it? Maybe he'd get lucky for once and it wouldn't be so bad.

The demon monster was continuing its rampage down Main Street, and most people had made themselves scarce, which was the only saving grace on the table. Sam threw the SUV in reverse, backing as far down the street as he could, aware that Sylvia was moving up the sidewalk towards the beast, and Cass was nowhere to be seen. (At the moment.) He revved the engine, and missed the demonic, throaty purr of the Impala's engine, although Dean would straight up murder him if he used the car for this. Sylvia gave him the high sign, and he threw it into drive and pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

He didn't know how fast the SUV was going when it slammed into the demon. Fast enough that he felt the impact, despite the fact that the airbag had already exploded in his face and seemingly cushioned the blow. Sam may have blacked out for a second, because the next thing he was aware of was a noise like metal shears cutting into something, and he looked up in time to see the demon thing rip the roof of the SUV off with its sharp teeth.

Hastily he unfastened his seatbelt and fell out of the vehicle while the demon beast went in for another bite, and he heard gunfire, as Sylvia was peppering it with salt rounds. Whether they would do any good was another question entirely.

Trying to stand up, Sam made a terrible discovery: he'd hurt himself. There was a huge gash in his right leg just centimeters from his kneecap, and it seemed to not want to work with him anymore. Looking up, this close to the beast, he saw its green hide looked as thick and impenetrable as body armor. The scales might as well have been chainmail.

Still, the SUV did do some damage. It had a sticky brownish-black substance drooling from its mouth and staining the pavement, and even though it smelled like sulfur and burned tires, he guessed it was blood. Sam also realized its tongue looked like a gigantic slug, slimy and brown, and forked, so the ends could have been antennae. It was all incredibly gross.

It saw him attempting to drag himself towards the sidewalk, and he was pretty sure he was done for, when Cass materialized on top of its head, and buried his angel blade between its eyes.

It reared up violently, sending Cass flying, but the blade was still buried in its head, and it didn't like it one bit. It was shaking all over, like a dog that just came in from a downpour.

Cass was suddenly beside him, helping him stand and healing him at the same time. Neat trick. "Think this'll put it down?"

"If it doesn't, I can always drop a building on it," Cass said.

Sam glanced at him in surprise. Was that a joke or a genuine offer? If dropping a building on its head was on the table, he was going to vote for that. Maybe the Washington Monument, point down, if Cass could swing that.

One of Sylvia's shots managed to get it in the eye, which exploded like an infected wart and splattered black goo for a surprising distance. It made a noise somewhere between a screech and a roar that was so loud it punched through Sam's eardrums like a knitting needle, and he reeled backwards, grabbing his head. Cass grimaced, but that was the extent of his discomfort.

Sam felt himself grabbed roughly, and was pulled face to face with a black eyed trucker, as tall him but one and a half times wide. "Hurting our friend like that? Bad show." He pushed him, and Sam found himself flying through the air. He impacted with the crumpled body of the SUV and rolled over it, coming down hard on the other side.

Oh right, the angel proof demons. They were all friends? Great, just great. Maybe Cass could drop a building on them too.


	8. My Head Is Full of Ghosts

_**8 –My Head Is Full of Ghosts**_

Sam and Dee joined Dean and Cass at the diner, and while they ate – all but Cass, who continued to sit that one out – they discussed strategy. They were going to hit Bishop around dusk, which would be good for the vampires, assuming the Queen decided to throw her expendable red shirts at him. If not, they'd have to just move on without the vampires. Sam had a couple of ideas that they might do whether the vamps came along or not. One of them was pretty dangerous, so Dee volunteered to do that one. The weary look Sam shot her sister was priceless, and only after grinning about it for a few seconds did he realize Sam had given that to him on more than one occasion. Damn.

Dean considered telling them about the potential collapse of reality, but decided Cass was right. There was nothing they could do about it, and they were dealing with enough shit. He was kind of sorry Cass told him, because now he didn't want to know. There was a certain peace in ignorance sometimes. Just like they were all pretending this attack against Bishop wasn't most likely a suicide mission. Fake it 'til you make it, right? Besides, if reality did collapse, it didn't really matter if they were alive for it or not. Dead now, dead later; it was all death. Only the timing was different.

He wondered how it was going in his home dimension. He also wondered how much time had passed, since dimensional time seemed to vary. He really hoped it wasn't like Hell, where time seemed to slow to a torturous crawl. It would be terrible to finally go home, and find out he missed a year. It'd be funny if he came back and was only gone five minutes.

Sam left to get some materials for tonight, leaving him, Dee, and Cass to summon Crowley back at at the motel and let her know when they were making their move. It was the same summoning ritual from their dimension, so that was something.

Crowley wasn't dressed to go to the opera today. She wore a dark man's suit, something that wouldn't have been out of place on their Crowley, but in place of a tie she wore some kind of amulet with a vivid, almost liquid red stone in the middle, and had undone the buttons on the white shirt to reveal a hint of impressive cleavage. Again, the fact that Crowley was hot here still made him want to laugh. She was probably Queen of the Crossroad demons simply because men would throw their souls at her as soon as she showed up. "Hello, girls. Male Dee. I take it you've figured out when you're going to attack."

"We have. Tonight at dusk," Dee said. "You'll be ready?"

She waved her hand dismissively. Clearly that was her favorite move. "I was born ready, darling." She let her eyes linger on Dean, and suddenly he felt dirty. "Still here, hmm? Tell me, what's Castiel like in your dimension."

"Pretty much the same." Okay, that wasn't perfectly true, as he was in a male vessel, and one that didn't feel like being an angel meat suit gave him divine purpose after the fact, but Crowley had no reason to know that. "You're a man there, though."

She quirked an eyebrow in curiosity. "Really? Am I attractive?"

Dean thought about it for a moment. "You seem to think you are."

"Good enough for me," she said, and disappeared.

"I hate it when she does that," Dee said, sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked equally wired and tired, a state Dean was all too familiar with.

"Are we actually ready for this?" Dean wondered.

Dee shrugged, while Cass said, "As ready as we'll ever be."

Yeah, he was afraid of that. He hoped Sam was doing better than they were.

* * *

Sylvia shot one of the superpowered demons point blank in the chest with salt rounds, and the demon reacted only by punching her in the face. The demon, currently inhabiting a soccer mom type with bleached hair, didn't seem to notice or care about the big hole in her torso. It was sizzling a bit, but the demon didn't flinch.

This was bad. None of the old stand bys were working. Sam threw holy water in the face of another, inhabiting what looked to be a jogger, and the demon not only didn't care, but leveled him with a punch that loosened a tooth. Sam was just now getting to his feet. Cass was physically fighting the trucker looking demon in a toe to toe fistfight that was remarkably bloody, and pretty much impossible, as no regular demon should have been able to withstand an angel assault for even a second.

Okay, salt, silver, and holy water were out. What did they do to fight these fucking things? Sam then fell back on the question he used to get him through tough spots, when he was all out of ideas: what would Dean do? And the answer came immediately, like Dean was standing right behind him and whispering in his ear. _"Take the head."_

In theory, a demon could use a vessel without a head. But it would be a lot like that scene in Reanimator, where the headless corpse stumbles around trying to find its living head. Only the demon's head wouldn't be alive. The downside is it would kill the vessel, but if regular demons could ride their vessels and kill them about sixty to seventy percent of the time, chances are these people were already gone. But didn't he owe it to them to try and save them if there was the slightest chance they were still alive?

The demon beast thing was still bleeding, and now one eyed, but its rampage had not stopped. It was just slower now, and more bumbling than ever. It was possible Cass's angel blade was still killing it, but slowly, and it was so big it could take hours to die, maybe even days. The entire town would be flattened by then.

" _No choice, Sammy,"_ the Dean in his head said. _"You need to find out if these things can be killed."_

Goddamn it, he did. He had a knife, although really it was a mini-machete, one that could be easily hidden under a coat. It would take a head easily. He decided to go after the one fighting Cass, as the vessel had to have been beyond critically injured after taking an angel beating. His internal organs were probably a slurry, more smoothie than chunks; only the demon inside was keeping it functional.

Sam waited until his back was turned to him, as he kicked Cass through one of the few remaining shop windows along the street. The trucker went stalking after Cass, and that's when Sam moved. He ran across the street, avoiding demon blood and gigantic cracks made by the demon beast. The trucker demon heard his footfalls and started to turn, just as Sam got into position and swung.

It took a lot of force to chop clean through a neck, more than most slasher films would have you believe. But as long as the blade was sharp and strong, and you put some power into it, it was doable. Stance was a lot more important than you would have thought. Dean used to make him practice this when they were kids, in case they encountered ghouls or zombies. He thought it was morbid and terrible, like many of Dean's "practice drills", and ridiculous on top of it, because even at eight, he understood if ever encountered these things on his own, he'd be dead so fast it would be ridiculous. A young boy was never going to successfully fight off an adult ghoul or zombie (slightly better odds with the zombie). Once he dared to tell him that, and Dean went full Dad on him, telling him if he decided he'd lose the fight before the fight began, it would become a self-fulfilling prophesy. "Always think you're gonna win, you got this," Dean told him, with all the fervor of a religious convert. "Doubt is death. Don't do their job for them." That was when he realized Dean was lost. He allowed himself to get swept up in Dad's obsession, drank the Kool Aid, and would never be his own person, just Dad Junior. It was a mean, awful thing to think, and when he was older he was embarrassed by the thought, even though he still believed it. Now, looking back on it all, he figured that was how Dean stayed sane. He wasn't allowed a childhood, or much of his own life. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and it was borderline abuse.

And yet he'd taught him exactly how to decapitate something in one swing.

He caught the demon in mid-turn, slicing clean through his neck and spinal cord. It was so violent Sam sent his head flying down the sidewalk, as the demon's body seemed to lurch drunkenly to the side before collapsing. The first thing Sam saw was the stuff coming out of his neck. Not red blood, but black blood, as dark as oil. At least at first. After about a pint and a half spilled out on the sidewalk, red blood started pouring out.

Cass climbed out of the ruined shop window, broken glass dropping from his coat. He was bleeding from the nose and mouth, and had a few glass cuts on his face and hands, but he looked remarkably okay for all of that. Then again, angel. They were remarkably durable.

"Do you know what the hell this means?" Sam wondered, pointing at the pool of black blood.

Cass looked down at it a moment, as if seeing to the very molecules of the stuff. Which was possible. "It's the demon," he finally said. "This is its form."

Wow. That was strange. "It's blood?"

"It's liquid. It fully integrates into the host body at the cellular level. It's truly evil. A possessed person can never become unpossessed." Cass looked up at him, and with his strangely innocent blue eyes and blood speckled face, he made a surprisingly creepy picture. "Unless you empty the vessel of blood."

Holy fuck. That was evil. He met Cass's eyes, and just confirmed what he was telling him. "We have to kill them all."

Cass nodded slowly. "Rip out the heart or take off the head. The vessels are beyond saving."

Damn it. Here he'd been hoping they could save some.

Sam located Sylvia, who was currently lying on the street and fighting the soccer mom for her gun. She was straddling Sylvia's chest and punching her in the face, one hand on the gun. He ran over and kicked the soccer mom demon off Sylvia, and before she could regain her feet, he brought his machete down and cut off the demon's head.

"Whoa," Sylvia said, rolling up to her feet. "Little extreme there, bucko."

"This is the only way to kill these demons," Sam explained. "They don't leave."

Before he could explain any further, the jogger asshole attempted to attack Cass, but he ducked under his sloppy swing and punched him in the chest. No, strike that – Cass punched through his chest. Sylvia jumped and let out a startled noise as Cass pulled his hand out of the man's torso, and with it brought out a human heart. The jogger's body crumpled to the street, as Cass's hand briefly lit up white, and the heart became ashes that drifted through his fingers like sand.

"Angels don't fuck around, do they?" Sylvia asked, stepping behind him so he could act as her human shield.

"No, they do not."

The beast was still stumbling around, crushing stuff, and Sam wondered if the same thing was affecting the beast. How the hell were they supposed to take off a head that large? And where was its heart? Did it just have the one? "What do we do about this one?"

Cass came over, eying the demon beast warily. After a long moment, he asked, "Where would someone find a chainsaw?"

Sam looked at him to make sure he wasn't joking. He didn't seem to be.

"What?" Sylvia asked, peeking out from behind Sam. "What are you saying?"

Sam sighed. He was not looking forward to this at all. "He's saying we have to go full Evil Dead on this motherfucker."

Dean was going to hate himself for missing this. He really would have enjoyed this.


	9. Drink Up and Be Somebody

_**9 – Drink Up and Be Somebody**_

Bishop was currently staying at a decaying mansion on the outskirts of town, where he had some kind of party raging most of the time. Because of the location, they figured Bishop was really a guy named John McNiven, the scion and only survivor of the McNiven family who owned the property. The parents were murdered in a scandalous, still unsolved case when John was seventeen, and Sam suspected it was some kind of demonic sacrifice ritual so arcane, the cops didn't recognize it. Sounded about right to Dean. What little he'd seen of Bishop, he still could easily picture him as the type who would murder his parents to make a demon deal.

On the drive up, Dean was the unfortunate backseat witness to an argument between Sam and Dee that sounded sadly familiar. Sam was wondering if she shouldn't "get juiced" to take on Bishop, because she was sure she could do major damage to him if she did, and juiced was a clumsy cover for demon blood. Dee was absolutely not on board with that, and insisted she'd rather die than go through all that shit again. Which Dean understood completely. He was a hundred percent on Dee's side here. Letting Sam drink the demon blood and go all psychic boy … er, girl was a whole different world of trouble that just wasn't necessary. Maybe it would help, but maybe it wouldn't, and while there was doubt there, there was no point in endangering Sam and everyone else.

Not that he said any of that. He wasn't so stupid that he was going to blunder into the middle of their argument. So he just watched from the backseat, and was secretly glad there were never too many passengers in his Impala, especially when he and Sam were arguing.

They did the usual, which was park farther away and approach on foot, keeping an eye out for sentries. Bishop wasn't concerned about them attacking, as he felt invincible, but he was concerned about party crashers.

Which was why it was funny to come across a muscular decapitated body, and five Goth boys playing a very loose game of kickball with the man's severed head. One of the guys, with black hair flopping over one of his eyes and a spiked dog collar around his neck, looked at them and sneered. "Winchesters. The Queen sent us to kill Bishop with you, I guess. I don't know why."

Oh, Dean could guess, but kept his mouth shut, and tried not to smile.

"Just the five of you?" Dee replied, clearly disappointed.

Floppy haired guy shrugged. "Guess so."

The three of them exchanged looks. Dee looked annoyed, Sam shrugged, and Dean was just trying to keep from laughing. All five looked like Goth Justin Biebers, and while they were vampires and probably could do some damage, they were perfect cannon fodder. If he was a vampire, he'd have totally sent these guys to their death.

"Know how many people in the house are demons and how many aren't?" Dee asked.

Floppy shrugged. "Mostly demons. Very little human blood smell, lotsa ass blood smell."

"Ass blood?" Sam asked.

"Demon blood smells like ass."

Dee glanced at Sam. "You never told me that."

Sam's fuck you look was priceless, and once again, familiar.

"We want the humans left alone," Dee said, and at this, the vampires groaned. "But the demons are fair game."

"So what fun do we get out of that?" Floppy demanded.

Dee pulled out her machete, lightning fast, and held it up against floppy's neck. "I don't kill you, and neither does your Queen. We clear?"

He pouted like a bratty teenager, but he sighed and said, "Fine."

"You wanna go ahead, storm the castle? We'll be right behind you," Dean said, jerking his head towards the mansion.

Floppy scoffed. "You'll hardly be right behind us, old man." At that, floppy and his friends disappeared. They weren't ghoul fast, but vampires were slightly faster than humans on their best days. Nights. Whichever.

"I can barely contain my hatred," Dee said.

Sam shrugged. "At least you know why the Queen sent them."

That was certainly true.

They started up the wide slope of lawn to the decay house, as Sam cut her palm and started quietly intoning a spell that would offer them a little bit of protection against the demon horde. It wouldn't hold for long, but hopefully it wouldn't have to.

Dean could hear the music coming from the house, and it was the nicer, slicker cousin of the music at the vamp club. That had a thumping, mechanical, migraine sort of feel, but this music was lighter, bouncier, rabbit fast. He was pretty sure the time of raves had gone by, but maybe not in this dimension.

Dean took out his sawed off with the salt rounds, while Dee put her machete away, and slung the bag she was carrying to the front, so she could access her grenades easier. These weren't your typical grenades; in fact, they were more like fancy ass water balloons, filled with holy salt water and a little bit of explosive, just enough to guarantee a wide spray pattern. Dean would be covering her while she tossed them around.

By the time they were about thirty feet from the house, people were boiling out the front door like angry bees out of a hive, screams and shout behind them. The vamp Biebs were making trouble, but that was probably easy for them. They could show up and sulk and throw a bitch fit, and make everyone irritated.

Dean didn't get much of a chance to eye the décor, as once he was inside, he started shooting anything with black eyes, and Dee started throwing grenades. Sam had Ryu's knife this time, and started slashing and stabbing any demon that got close enough.

The demons screamed and smoked as the holy salt water hit them, clearing a path towards a huge red carpeted staircase that was so large and dramatic it might as well have been part of a movie set. Some Goth boys were in a fight with some demons in the living room, breaking furniture and sending someone flying through a window. Dean was hoping someone got thrown into a stereo so that goddamn house music would shut off.

Dean got his .45 out in his left, and started taking out the kneecaps of approaching demons, as even they couldn't stand on a leg that had been mostly shot off. He didn't take any time to contemplate how many demons there were here, because he didn't want to psyche himself out, but damn, there were a fuckload more than he thought there'd be. The vamps weren't lying about the amount of them.

He was trying to look everywhere at once as they began their ascent up the stairs, but as he turned to shoot one demon in the face, another stabbed him in the back. He couldn't help but let out a shout of pain, and Dee turned and gave his assailant – an otherwise cute girl mostly wearing body paint and hot pants – a grenade right in the face. She howled in agony and spun away, her face pretty much melting down to bone. Good.

Dee looked at the wound, and he asked, "How bad?" He took a second to catch his breath, and shot a charging demon in the face. A second one was coming in on the left, but one of the Goth boys tackled him and started pounding his head into the marble floor.

"It's a kitchen knife," she reported. "If I pull it out, you're gonna bleed more. Can you live with it in?"

"And give some weaponless demon a weapon to use against me? Fuck no. Pull it out. I'll live."

"Are you sure?"

"It didn't puncture a major artery or vein, did it?"

"Not that I can tell."

"Pull it."

Dean tried to brace himself, and Dee pulled it out as fast as possible, but holy fuck, that hurt. Dee broke the blade on the stair's railing, and threw the jagged, useless handle aside. Dean could feel blood, warm and itchy, pouring down his back. He took the hit near the shoulder, but it wasn't impeding movement, at least not yet, so he figured he could live with it. Not that he had any choice in the matter.

Dee was out of grenades, so she tossed the bag away, and pulled out her own sawed off shotgun. "Move to the center, I'll cover our six."

"I got it." Dean insisted.

She grabbed his arm, and stilled him so she could walk a step down from him. She then glared at him. "Cover Sam. I've got our six."

Bossy, wasn't she? He was still afraid to argue with her, so he did as she said, covering Sam as she intoned another spell, one that should preempt any spell Bishop might try to throw. Now the demons on the first floor were starting to show, realizing the guys on the ground floor had not done their jobs. Dean shot one in the face, and the other in the knee, and the knee shot was so good he took the bottom half of the demon's right leg clean off. The guy screeched as he went down, and Dean chided him, "Play through the pain, asshole." He was doing that himself.

It wasn't the first time Dean had been stabbed, and it probably wasn't the last either, not with his fantastic track record. But the one thing weird about all of them was they either hurt more than you expected, or less. This one was throbbing, but it didn't really hurt that bad. At least not right now. Maybe when adrenaline wore off, it'd be a motherfucker, but right now, he was golden. If he couldn't feel the blood running down his back, he wouldn't know he'd been stabbed at all.

Despite the fact that there were dozens of doors on this floor, Sam knew where Bishop was hiding out thanks to the spell. Of course he was down at the far end of the hall, behind the biggest set of doors. He and Dee shot everything that moved, and for one fleeting second, Dean was sure they had made it.

And that's when the door beside Bishop's room opened, and they heard the unmistakable snarling growl of a Hellhound.

"Fuck me," Dean said, as he heard the second growl and click of claws on floorboards only twenty feet away from him.

* * *

Sam had a new thing to check off his theoretical bucket list: chainsaw attack.

Luckily, this was semi-rural Maine, so of course there was a hardware store with ample axes and chainsaws, including ones that no regular human could possibly lift. So Cass got one of those. Sam picked one that had a weight he thought he could best handle, and Sylvia did the same. None of them had ever fought with chainsaws before, and in fact, Sam had never used one before. Sylvia had a spare can of gasoline in her car which they used to power them. She said she kept the large can of gas because you never knew when you'd need to light up a body, a phrase that would have been super sinister coming from anyone who wasn't a hunter, and still kind of was, in spite of her job.

It'd be a three pronged attack: Sam from the left, Sylvia from the right, and Cass had the more dangerous job of attacking from above. This felt unbelievably dangerous and stupid, but there were no other moves to make beyond simply running away. And while that sounded kind of nice at this point, and he was sure he could get Sylvia on board, Cass wasn't going to leave it. And that was the right thing to do. It was just this was going to be a hundred different kinds of horrible, and that was assuming everything went as planned. But was that new? This was the life of a hunter: epically fucked up. He just hoped, wherever Dean was, he was having a much better time.

The demon beast was still shambling down main street, and still trampling everything in its path. The good thing was they were never going to have to track this thing, as there was a slight possibility you could see it from orbit. The sound of the chainsaws firing up made no difference to the thing either.

Sam took a couple of deep breaths, so glad the chainsaw had a dead man's switch, so the second pressure was taken off the trigger, the chain stopped dead. He couldn't accidentally slice his own arm or leg off. Actually, it was still possible he could hurt himself, but it would be hard. Sylvia was a little worried about it too. Cass didn't care, but again, angel.

Sam decided to pretend he was Dean, and therefore capable of enjoying this, as he ran up to the beast and jammed the chainsaw into its elongated neck.

It took a few seconds to get through the scaled skin, but when the blade finally bit into flesh and blackish-brown blood started flying, the thing jerked its head right into him, sending him flying.

Sam hit a crumbled car, and the chainsaw smacked him in the face. He'd let go of the trigger, so the chain was off, but it still cut his chin on impact, and when he slipped down to the road, the heavy chainsaw slammed down on his thighs, grazing his groin. Wow, that hurt a lot more than he expected. Should have worn a cup.

Sylvia ended up in the same boat as him, shrugged away as soon as she hit something, but Cass then popped up on top of the beast again, and drove the chainsaw straight down. The beast reared and sent him flying, but he disappeared in mid-air, as only angels could.

He popped back into reality near him, as Sam pulled himself up to his feet. "At this rate, we'll have its head off by Thursday."

Cass scowled. "I don't think reality has that long."

Oh, what fresh hell was this? "What?"

"The dimensional fractures are getting worse. They will eventually collapse into a singularity of one reality, which will then collapse as well."

"When were you going to tell me this?"

Cass gave him a baffled look. "I just did."

For the most part, Sam honestly believed Cass liked being literal around Dean because he enjoyed Dean's exasperation. Sam couldn't prove this, but he just had that feeling, and exasperating Dean was kind of fun (and so very easy). But every now and again, Cass did something that reminded him he was genuinely alien. Not Human, not demon, something other than mortal. Such as when cosmic level bad shit didn't seem to bother him, at least not externally. "Can we stop it?"

"Possibly. We do need to take care of this demon first."

"Then stop it moving so we have a better shot," Sam snapped. He blamed his irritation on both the crotch hit, and the fact that he had to have another nigh apocalyptic event rattling around his head. Couldn't something go right for once?

Cass blinked out of existence, and then he was back on the beast again, this time driving the chainsaw down right into its spine. The beast made the eardrum torturing noise again, making Sam wince and grab his head, but the beast did indeed collapse on the asphalt.

Okay, so, being literal with Cass sometimes paid off. He had to make a mental note of that.

Sam hefted his chainsaw, ignoring the blood dripping from his chin, and started the saw again. He couldn't even pretend to enjoy this. This was going to suck a thousand times before it ever got remotely better. He didn't want to do this. But want didn't come into it. He had to.

With Cass still on top of the beast, and Sylvia on the other side, Sam swung the saw, and started cutting.


	10. Destroy Everything You Touch

_**10 – Destroy Everything You Touch**_

Dean shot at the area where he thought one of the hellhounds was, and Dee joined him. There was a whimper and a double shot of spraying black blood, so they hit, but he knew from the clicking claws that they'd done nothing but piss it off. Damn it.

"In here," Sam said, lunging for the nearest door. They all followed, almost trampling one another as they fell inside, and Dee, the last one in, not only slammed the door but leaned against it. A good thing, as one of the hellhounds slammed into it, making the door rattle in its frame.

"How the fuck does he have hellhounds?" Dee asked. Dean was wondering the same thing.

"Holy shit," Sam said. And it took Dean a second to figure out what she was reacting to.

The room they had come into wasn't another bedroom. It was covered floor to ceiling in various demonic and Enochian symbols, many of which looked and smelled like they'd been drawn in blood. There were pillar candles on the floor, not currently lit, but melted down enough to indicate they'd been used at some point. There were chains and burnt bones near the left hand wall, just outside a summoning circle. "This is where he's gonna do the ritual," Dee said, as the hellhound slammed against the door again. Dean joined Dee pressing against the door, if only to try and hold it up for a couple more seconds. The fact that there were at least two meant they'd be lucky to hold out for an entire minute."If he hasn't already."

"Would trashing this room make any difference at all?" Dean wondered.

Sam shook her head. "Doubt it. I'm not sure burning down the entire house will make a difference."

"We could do it just for fun," Dee said. It was a thought.

One of the hellhounds outside the door gave a huge whimper, and there was a loud crashing noise, followed by another howling noise of pain. After a second, they heard Cass say, "Hallway's clear for now. Let's go."

Thank fuck. Where the hell had she been?

They opened the door, which immediately fell off one hinge, and Cass was standing there with her angel blade still in her hand, the left sleeve of her trench coat shredded almost beyond recognition. There was a huge puddle of black blood near the top of the stairs, and a major chunk of the first floor railing was now missing. It had been a super short fight, but man, it must have been intense.

With Cass in the lead, they charged to the room at the end of the corridor, and Cass kicked it open for maximum bad ass effect.

And that's when the gunfire started.

* * *

By the time they sawed the beast's head off, Sam was so drenched in foul smelling blood it had ceased to be funny. Sure, yeah, this was the full Evil Dead treatment, but man, was it disgusting. He smelled like a tire fire in a full septic tank. He was on the verge of vomiting, but had so far managed to keep his lunch where it was. He wasn't sure why he was bothering, since Dean wasn't here to razz him about it, but it was kind of ingrained now. Didn't want to look like a wimp in front of your older brother.

Sylvia was at least in the same boat. Cass looked pretty damn spotless, save for a few odd flecks here and there, and that just wasn't fair. Who did you petition for that?

"We should go," Cass said, as if they weren't all bloodstained piles of goo besides a massive headless monster corpse.

Sam scoffed. "I need to clean up first."

The look Cass gave him was surprisingly judgmental. "The fate of many dimensions is at stake."

"I get that. But I'm gonna barf in a minute. This stuff is fucking disgusting." And his arms hurt, possibly from the strain of holding up the chainsaw and using it to cut into bones as big around as his own leg.

Cass looked briefly annoyed, but he touched Sam, and he got the strangest feeling, like it suddenly got ten degrees warmer. And when Cass pulled his hand away from his arm, he was suddenly clean. "You can clean stuff too?" Sam asked, amazed. He should really have Cass go into their motel rooms before they brought their stuff in.

"Actually I'm simply destroying it," Cass said, as he did the same for Sylvia. She actually took a step back, as if she was afraid of Cass … and suddenly Sam understood she was. She hadn't dealt with angels before, and she must have found Cass baffling, even frightening. She'd seen him kill a man by ripping his heart out of his chest, decapitate a monster with a chainsaw, take a beating that would have killed a human and barely left him with a bloody nose. If you didn't know what an angel's power set was, they'd probably be just another monster to you.

Cass must have gotten that too, as he cocked his head, and said, "I've no wish to harm you."

She nodded in that way you did when you were sure you were dealing with a crazy person who might snap and kill you any second. "Good to know."

Cass seemed confused by her fear. She had no idea he was actually one of the good guys. A strange good guy who definitely had a thing for his brother, but hey, at least they had one angel in their corner. Sam decided distracting him before Sylvia really freaked out was the best course of action. "So what can we do to stop the reality collapse?"

Cass finally looked back at him. "Since it's Gluskab and Malsumis fighting, our best course of action may be to summon Tabaldak and get him to stop the fight."

Sam shook his head, and then attempted to pop his ears, on the off chance they were full of gloopy demon blood. "Were you … was that English?"

"You've never heard of Gluskab and Malsumis? Or Tabaldak?"

"Yes."

Cass frowned at him. "You're unaware of the Abenaki's creator God?"

"Apparently." Sam really hated it when he didn't know something. But Abenaki was familiar, wasn't it? "Wait – the Abenaki? The Native American and First Nation tribe?"

Cass nodded, the irritated look disappearing. "Tabaldak is their creator God. He created Gluskab and Malsumis, and Malsumis seeks out evil. I imagine he started this fight with his brother. Summoning Tabaldak will not be easy."

"Should we try talking to … Gluskab and Malsumis?"

"I believe you may have encountered one in the forest, most likely Gluskab since you're still alive. How did that go?"

Wow. Sarcasm from Castiel. And Dean thought he didn't have a sense of humor. "You think Tabaldak will be any more receptive to us?"

Cass shrugged. "Your race may work against us."

That had never occurred to Sam. But sure, yeah. Decimating a God's people probably wasn't looked upon well by that God.

"Uh," Sylvia said, still hesitant. "You know you're talking about my people, right?"

Both Sam and Cass looked at her with interest. How about that? Luck might have finally been turning their way.

* * *

The first bullets hit Cass and passed through her like nothing, because bullets weren't enough to take Cass down. (Didn't he and Bobby learn that the hard way?) But the passing through part was the part that sucked.

One tagged Sam, and another got Dee, who shoved Dean back into the hallway for its meager cover. Dean managed to scramble to the side, and asked, "Clear?"

"Do it!" Dee shouted in reply. Sounded like she was near the floor.

Dean blasted in covering fire blindly, hoping against hope he wasn't hitting Sam or Dee with friendly fire. Over the concussive bangs of gunfire, he heard a lot of shit breaking in the master bedroom, and the occasional shout or yelp. There were other shots too, not slamming into the door or the jamb, and he had to assume Dee and Sam had reached some kind of cover and were shooting back as well.

Wasn't that cheating? Here they were dealing with a black magic guy, and he has his people use bullets. Seemed like cheating.

Dean ejected the empty clip and slapped a new one in in a couple seconds flat, and got right back to blind cover fire. The jamb was taking many shots and starting to dissolve into splinters, when he heard Cass say, "Close your eyes!"

Since Dean was out in the hall, he didn't bother, but he did look away as the bedroom soon lit up white, far too bright for anyone to safely view, and even though he barely saw it, it made his eyes water. There were high pitched screams of pain, but none of them were female.

The light died, and the shooting stopped, followed by sobs and noise of pain. Dean still edged in cautiously, guns first, but immediately saw there was no point. These men weren't going to be shooting anyone ever again.

There were four of them, all about (his) Sam's size, but twice as wide. And they were all on the floor, some with bullets wounds, all with their eyes burned out of their sockets. Dean would have called Cass to task for needless cruelty, except these men didn't look perfectly human. He couldn't tell what kind of monster they were with their eyes burned out, but he didn't much care either. None of these guys were Bishop.

Dee got up, blood pouring down her right arm, and grabbed the nearest eyeless guy by the collar. "Where's your boss?" she demanded, shaking him. "Where the fuck's Bishop?"

"Eat me, bitch."

Dee pulled out her gun, and shot him point blank in the head. Dean would have been surprised, except she'd done this type of thing before. He was actually a little worried about his female alter ego. There was a surprisingly fine line between badass and damaged beyond the telling of it, and she was riding it. He wasn't … was he? Now he was second guessing himself. "Anybody else wanna give me shit?" Dee asked, as the corpse thudded to the carpet.

"Winchesters," Bishop's chiding, sneering voice sing-songed. It sounded like he was shouting from the ground floor. "Looking for little old me?"

Cass helped Sam up. It looked like she'd just gotten nicked in the side; bullet missed everything major. It wasn't bleeding as badly as Dee's wound, or Dean's stab wound. His shirt was clinging to his back, and it made the itchy feeling worse. But he wasn't lightheaded yet, so he couldn't have lost that much blood.

The four of them went back into the hall, weapons out, although Cass took the lead, and was seemingly unarmed, as she didn't have her angel blade out. But she didn't need it either. She was God's weapon, after all, one of many.

Bishop was indeed on the ground floor, and from here they could see him standing in the center of the front room, the decapitated bodies of vamps and demons surrounding him like a summoning circle made of flesh. He still wasn't wearing a shirt, but Dean suddenly saw why. All those demonic sigils tattooed on him? They were moving. They flowed and stretched over his skin like snakes of red and black and blue ink, twisting into new, more dangerous symbols on his torso and arms. Dark tattooed flames wound around his throat and flowed over his face, making it look like black veins were popping out all around his face. It looked like all the color was leaching from his hair and into the sigils, as it turned icy white while they watched. What the fuck kind of creepazoid magic was this?

Bishop turned his blue eyes on Cass, and as Dean watched, tattooed filaments reached his bottom eyelid, and his whites started turning black. "Think I forgot about you, angel?" He snapped his fingers, and suddenly a circle of holy oil fire blazed to life around Cass.

He, Dee, and Sam all moved to bust Cass out, but they seemed to hit an invisible wall, and Bishop snickered. "Didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?"

Dee had her gun out, and aimed it down at Bishop, even though they all knew it would do no good. She shot him in the face before, and he barely noticed it. "Release her, Bishop."

He grinned, and revealed his teeth were red. Why the fuck were his teeth red? The tattoos on his chest were now swirling, forming what looked like a reversed anti-possession symbol. Why? "Oh, Deeanna, since when do I take orders from meat like you? You're hardly even enough for a snack."

There was a black hole forming in the center of the anti-possession symbol, a pool of ink that grew to encompass his entire stomach. And for a second, Dean thought he saw movement within the darkness, but that was nuts. Right?

Now the ground was shaking, like an earthquake was happening – and California, so maybe – but the way Bishop was grinning, Dean didn't think so. Somehow he was doing this. He was a living Hellgate; a full conduit of black magic. Dean couldn't even imagine how much power that was. That must have put him near god level. Black smoke was starting to drift from his mouth, nose, and eyes, too insubstantial to be demons. For the moment. The dark hole on his torso was now encompassing his chest, and Dean saw movement again, but it was clearer this time. Holy shit. Dean could see the pit of Hell straight through him. How …? This was fucking crazy. How was that even possible?

"Here they come," Cass said.

"I need just one more thing before we get this party started," Bishop said. His face was crisscrossed with black veins, and he still had blue irises even though the rest of his eyes were black. The fact that you could just see the human part in there made him more of a nightmare figure than almost anything Dean had ever seen. "Blood." Bishop just waived his hand, which left dark trails behind it, and something came flying at them, so fast all Dean could see of it was a glint of silver.

"Get down!" Dee shouted, and hip checked Sam out of the way, as the ceremonial dagger hit her square in the chest instead.

"Dee!" Sam shouted, scrambling up from the floor.

Dean caught Dee before she hit the ground, but he already knew she was dead. The dagger had gotten her in the heart, and her eyes were open, staring at nothing. And there was a weird disconnect looking at a face that could be his, but wasn't, dead.

Sam joined him on the other side, tears glistening in her eyes, but they weren't just tears of sorrow. Rage burned there, and Dean got that too. Some creepy ass fucker needed to die, and he was just downstairs.

"You're dead," Cass said, her voice level but filled with steel. The only time he'd ever heard Cass speak with such glaring emotion, a lot of asses got kicked. "I will tear you to shreds." Not a threat; a statement of intent.

Bishop snickered, as more smoke came from his mouth. "Neat trick from behind holy oil, little bird. I've clipped your wings. Now watch your daddy's world end."

And suddenly black smoke gushed from Bishop's torso like a geyser of death.


	11. What Went Down

_**11 – What Went Down**_

Now Sam had another item to cross off on the bucket list that he didn't know he had: doing peyote.

The thing was, Dean was just going to kill himself when he found out he missed his opportunity to live out his Evil Dead fantasy with a chainsaw (he loved those movies), and now to take hallucinogenic drugs for a purpose beyond getting wasted. Sam had hated the whole chainsaw thing, and he was not looking forward to the peyote thing at all.

But according to Cass, Tabaldak couldn't be summoned to this plain of existence. He had to be summoned on a psychic plain, which Cass could apparently reach without assistance, but since he and Sylvia were simply human, they needed a "boost" to get there. And the best boost was peyote.

Sylvia was quick to point out she'd never done it either, and was just as squeamish about it as he was. (And in his head, he could just imagine Dean leaning back, eating peyote buttons like M&M's, asking when it was supposed to kick in. Oh, Dean liked to pretend he'd never done any drugs, but Sam wasn't stupid, and he knew Dean's appetite for vices was prodigious and seemingly bottomless. He drew the line at heroin and crack, but everything else? Frankly, Sam wouldn't have been surprised if Dean had tried everything on the planet at least once. Hell, maybe Dean had already done peyote. He once let slipped he'd done LSD, but quickly denied it when he realized what'd he'd said. Sam let it go, but never bought it.)

Cass insisted he could keep them all together on the psychic plain, and Sam trusted him, but he really didn't want to do this. It was yet another thing he had to do. Hunters should have gotten hazard pay, or even just a hazard beer.

At least peyote was natural, right? Pieces of a cactus. Sam decided to bite the bullet and started eating them. They didn't taste great, but they didn't taste terrible either. They kind of tasted like nothing, like rice cakes, but with better texture.

Although it seemed weird to go summon a god on a psychic plane in Sylvia's Dodge Charger, that's exactly what they were doing. He and Sylvia were in the front, and Cass was in the back, waiting for them to trip their balls off.

It was times like these that Sam remembered he could have been a lawyer. He could have had a nice, normal job, and a nice, normal life. He wouldn't be doing drugs within sight of a headless monster corpse and an angel in the backseat. God, that almost sounded like a Tom Waits song.

He looked at Sylvia, who was eating her own peyote, and asked, "Do you ever wonder what it would be like if you had a normal life?"

She snorted a laugh, and held a hand up to her mouth, like she was afraid of spitting peyote everywhere. "Naw. My family was attacked by a wendigo when I was six. I was pretty much doomed from the beginning. Normal life is for suckers. And people who didn't have an Uncle eaten by a cannibal monster."

Yeah, Sam could see that. "I'm sorry."

She shrugged. "No biggie. He was my Drunkle."

"Drunkle?"

"Drunk Uncle. He wasn't the good one."

Sam had no idea what to say to that, so he said nothing, and finished off his cactus pieces. How did Bobby know her again?

After waiting a sufficient amount of time, Sam was getting ready to complain to Cass this wasn't working, and didn't he know of some other way to get them all on the psychic plain together, when he realized the light was sharp. It was crystal clear, like he was viewing everything through a built in, invisible magnifying glass, and he was suddenly hot and sweating buckets. He shucked off his coat, and realized the material felt weird sliding over his skin. "Holy shit. What did I sign up for?"

Was this a bad trip? What if it was? What did he do? Dean should have been here. He'd know what to do. Even if he hadn't done this specific drug, he'd done enough like it to bluster through. Dean was great at blustering through things, especially if they were drug or drink related. Demon too.

Sylvia started giggling, but Sam couldn't see what she was laughing at. "This is like when I did mescal on spring break," she said.

She had a spring break? Did she go to college? Now Sam was bursting with questions. He did not get her at all, but now he kind of wanted to. Also, he was hungry.

Sam was vaguely aware of Cass touching him on the back of the head, and suddenly he wasn't sitting in a car, looking at a headless monster in what felt like total high definition. Now he was standing with Cass and Sylvia in a field of wildflowers, the grass almost up to his knees. The sky was vast, blue, and clear, and unlike any he'd seen on Earth, although he wasn't sure why. Then it hit him: despite the fact that there was light here, there was no sun.

Cass started walking, and they followed, although it wasn't immediately clear where he was going. These hills of wildflowers seemed to stretch on to the horizon in all directions. "Tabaldak," Cass said, seemingly to the sky. "We petition you for an audience. We just want to talk."

Sylvia looked around, and Sam joined her. It didn't look like anyone was coming. Cass repeated his plea again, and Sam wondered what they were supposed to do if it didn't work. Was there a plan B?

Sam was ready to ask Cass after his third attempt, but suddenly the meadow became a rocky cave behind a waterfall. They all turned to face a huge man, maybe eight feet tall, wearing leather pants and red and white body paint, and nothing else. His arms were extremely muscular, and he had a barrel chest that would make most bodybuilders cry. His eyes were dark pits within a slash of white paint, and his long black hair was held back by what looked like a living garter snake. But that was the peyote, right? "Angel, why are you disturbing my rest?" Tabaldak boomed, his deep voice echoing in the cave. His eyes settled on Sam, and he got a bad feeling even before Tabaldak grabbed his throat in one meaty fist. "And why do you dare bring an interloper to my realm? Speak or I gut him like a trout."

Yeah, this was going spectacular. Sam wished he was back in the car again.

* * *

Sam whipped out a flask and started guzzling it. Dean assumed it was whiskey, and was about to ask her for a hit, when he noticed her lips turning redder … no. There was just a single drop of blood suspended from her lower lip, and the horror of it struck him almost as hard as Dee's death.

Demon blood. Sam brought some anyway.

Cass must have noticed, because she said, "Sam, you can't."

But she dropped the now empty flask and rose to her feet, hand out as the demon smoke swirled up to the ceiling like a cyclone. "Kill my sister? I kill you, motherfucker."

The pillar of black smoke seemed to contract, as if in pain, and Bishop stumbled, but Dean wasn't sure if it was due to Sam's psychic woo woo stuff, or if it was because the gushing demons did not stop. Crowley had lived up to her bargain; the demons were stampeding out the door.

Well, this had gone from manageable disaster to totally fucked up in a very short amount of time. Yaay team.

Dean put Dee down carefully, and decided the only solution here was to free Cass. How to do that, though, since some kind of fucking spell was keeping them away from her?

Cass must have picked up his train of thought, because she said, "Dean, shoot the ceiling."

He looked at her, not sure he heard her right. "What?"

Cass pointed over her head. "The ceiling."

Dean had no idea why Cass wanted him to do that, but it was Cass, and vessels aside, he trusted him (her) to know what he was doing. So Dean fired his gun into the ceiling over Cass's head, and the bullets seemed to pass through the spell partition just fine.

Dean shot holes in the ceiling, and wondered why, even as the cracks widened. There was no way his bullets could be doing that, and he realized how intently Cass was staring up at them. Could she still use some of her powers within the circle? But what good would bringing the ceiling down upon her do? Then Dean got it.

Big chunks of it came smashing down, and some hit the circle of holy fire, temporarily smothering it. Cass was free.

Dean assumed the first thing she'd do was join the fight, but it wasn't. In a blink she was kneeling beside Dee. She pulled the knife out of her chest, and handed it to Dean, who got a better look at the thing. It was a weird dagger, clearly ceremonial, with symbols etched along the blade and handle. Was it magical?

Would it work on Bishop?

Dee gasped as Cass brought her back to life, and she looked around, confused. "What the hell happened?" she asked, sitting up.

Dean caught Cass's eye. "Get me down there."

Cass's brow furrowed in confusion, but she saw the knife in his hand and put it together. She nodded, and grabbed his arm.

Before he knew it, Dean was on the ground floor with Cass, where the smoke of demons was growing thick enough that Dean was almost afraid to breathe. But he had the anti-possession tattoo, and it hadn't failed him yet. Still, he had to crouch down to get an idea of where he was in the room in relation to Bishop, as it was hard to see. Then Cass lit up her hand, frying demons in smoke form, and he was able to see a little better.

The smoke seemed a little grabby too. It wasn't fully exerting power, but it was brushing against him, snaking out tendrils like it was considering choking him, but so far so good. He'd use Ruby's knife if he had to.

Bishop fell to his knees, spewing demons like a smokestack before EPA regulations. He was making choking noises now, like he really couldn't handle the deluge. Dean charged at him, diving into the strangely warm black smoke, and stabbed Bishop in the back of the neck, right where the brain stem was. He wanted to see the fucker recover from that.

Bishop turned towards him, smoke still spewing from his eyes and mouth, and held out a hand, which sent Dean flying across the room. He collided with a huge vase before hitting the wall at what felt like mach twelve. Okay, so, that didn't work.

Dee opened fire from the first floor, putting a few more bullets in his head, while Sam was still doing her psychic shit, and for a brief second, he thought her eyes were black. But that was an optical illusion caused by the smoke, right?

Bishop wasn't recovering as fast from the head shots now, and the knife was still in the back of his neck, pulsing like a second heart, some of those sigils on the handle starting to light up. What the fuck did that mean? Then Cass was standing right in front of Bishop, and put her hands inside his Hellgate torso. She looked him right in the eye, and said, "You are done."

And then Cass tore him into two pieces.

Dean just took it in without thinking about it, because it was too fucking bananas, much like everything that had gone on in this mansion. But Cass really did rip him in two, like the world's thinnest phone book, from head to crotch, and tossed his pieces aside like a torn nightgown. True to her word, Cass had torn him to shreds, and now he was nothing at all.

A rain of ash was coming down, as Sam toasted a lot of the demon smoke near the ceiling, and Cass lit things up from below, getting the ones still hovering around the floor. Slowly but surely, the demons were thinning out. All that was left of Bishop was some torn skin on the floor, and a few charred bones. And a thing that could have been a lung.

Dean sat against the wall for a moment, catching his breath. His knife wound was really throbbing right now. Impact probably hadn't done him any favors.

Now that the threat had passed, the argument was on. "Son of a bitch," Dee snapped, whirling on Sam. "I told you not to go back to demon blood."

"I'm a fucking adult, Dee, and I helped kill Bishop, so why don't you stow your shit? And, oh yeah, stop fucking dying for me, huh? Do me that small favor."

"Don't make this about me."

God, it really was like a female version of him and Sam. This was sad.

Suddenly Cass was up there with them, and did something remarkably weird. She hugged Dee. Dee seemed a little surprised by it, but after a second, hugged her back. "Thanks for the save, Cass."

"I've lost everything else," Cass said. "I'm not losing you too."

The hug seemed to linger, and Dean suddenly had a weird thought. Were… were Dee and Cass a thing? A couple? They didn't kiss, which would have cemented it, but … holy fuck, they were, weren't they? No wonder Cass ripped Bishop in half. That might have also explained why this Cass was so nice to him, although maybe not.

Dean used the wall to get to his feet, and realized he left a nice puddle of blood behind. "Uh, little help?" he asked.

Cass was down in front of him in a second, and touched his forehead. "One of these days, you're going to have to tell me how you Winchesters keep fighting after getting seriously injured."

Dean scoffed. "It's either that or lie down and wait for death. I'm goin' out swinging."

"Amen, brother," Dee said.

Cass just shook her head, but he thought he saw a stifled smile. Poor Cass. She seemed like too good a being to be mixed up with the likes of them.

They left, with Sam and Dee still arguing over the demon blood, which led to Dee calling Bobby and telling her to get the detox bunker ready. The sniping slipped into tense silence, which Dean was really accustomed to.

Since he was sitting in the back seat with Cass, he was dying to ask her if she and Dee were really a thing, but he couldn't see how to do that without sounding pervy. Really he was just curious.

When they stopped for gas, and Sam went on a snack run, he was alone in the car with her. But before he could ask, Cass looked at him, and said, "I gave up heaven for Dee. For you. At what point was that a rational act?"

That surprised him in more ways than one. "Huh?"

"I assume I died fighting Archangels in your dimension too, yes? I died for you both. I fooled myself for a while, insisting it was for all humanity, all Dad's creatures, but that was only part of it and I knew that too. I was punished in Heaven because I couldn't stand to see humanity hurt. More specifically, you. That really scared our overseers. Generalizations are fine, but individual attachments are dangerous. You were described as a lab rat I was starting to think fondly of, like a pet, and I couldn't do that, because once the Apocalypse came, you were as dead as most of the other specimens. I was informed I needed to remain detached, remember you were just a wheel in fate's plan, and step aside. I almost convinced myself I could do that. I'm a good soldier. Hell, I'm a great soldier. For millennia I have observed and reported and did my job as I was asked. And in the end, I gave it all up because I couldn't bear to see you – Dee – in pain." She smiled and chuckled faintly. "What a stupid epitaph, huh? Threw it all away for lowly, tormented human who's not even an eye blink in the grand scheme of things. I also know I will most likely die fighting the Apocalypse, but I'm okay with that too, as long as I can stop it, or at the very least, help Dee – you - survive it. And that is the end of one of Heaven's great generals. Or, as I'm known in Heaven, the idiot who loves a human, and threw everything away because of them."

This was flabbergasting. There was no other term for it. It took Dean a minute to figure out how he could even respond to that. This was all about this Cass, right? Not his Cass? Or was it? Now he was confused on top of everything else. He finally asked the only question he could. "Why me? Her?"

Cass shrugged. "As I said, it's not rational. I don't know. Except maybe we're broken in similar ways. We followed orders until our fathers – or mothers, as the case may be - left us behind, and the more time went on, the less sense our father's orders made, and the more we realized that they probably weren't in our best interest. We gave our lives for causes that abandoned us, that expected us to live in their aftermath like we were whole beings who could function like everyone else. We are so far from normal we can't even see the light of it from here. But that's okay. Because we have each other, and we will fight our way through or die trying, because that is what we do best. There is a fragile beauty in our inability to give in to the supposedly inevitable. We rage against the dark and the light, because we are rage. We were made to be weapons, and we have no off switch."

That hit him like a punch, and sunk in his stomach like lead. Holy shit. That all made a fuckload of sense, and it kind of scared him.

Cass gave him a kind smile, and a pat on the knee. "It's only scary at first. It's actually kind of comforting to have someone to battle through life with."

"Is it supposed to be this much of a battle?" Dean asked, and felt surprisingly weary. That kind of bone deep tiredness that usually only hit him after three straight nights of four hours sleep, little food, lots of beer, and more than a buttload of monsters. The kind that made him want to wash down a whole bottle of oxy with some whiskey, and just go to sleep one last time. Not that he ever would, but sometimes just the thought that he could was strangely comforting.

The smile she gave him was knowing and a little sad, and reminded him so much of his Cass it was crazy. "For us, friend? Yes. I'm afraid it is. We're soldiers, and our war never seems to ends."

Just what he feared.


	12. Father Sister Berzerker

_**12 – Father Sister Berzerker**_

"It's Gluskab and Malsumis," Cass said, seemingly not at all alarmed that Tabaldak had Sam by the neck and was currently dangling him off the ground. Despite the fact that this was a psychic plain, Sam could still feel the constriction around his throat. "They're warring on Earth."

"So?"

"They're destroying it, and the entire dimension around it. This is having ripple effects into other dimensions. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happens after that."

Tabaldak sighed heavily, and dropped Sam, who almost lost his balance. Sylvia helped steady him. "Those goddamn idiots. They're brothers! They can't get along for five freaking millennia?"

"The answer seems to be no," Cass replied. Was he actually getting sassy with a God? Were angels supposed to do that? Or if you weren't the angel of that particular God, were you allowed to be kind of pissy? There were so many questions Sam had about Gods and angels and hierarchies, and he was definitely still feeling some of the effects of the peyote.

When Tabaldak turned around, the setting changed. They were no longer in a cave behind a waterfall, but in what looked like a living room. Tabaldak was still eight feet tall and massively burly, but now he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and he had a soda in his hand, all his body paint gone. The snake was still holding his hair back. It flicked its tongue out at them. "I never should've created them. They've been nothing but trouble since they arrived."

"So maybe you should fix that?" Sylvia said. When he turned his gaze on her – which was still pretty intimidating – she added, "Sir."

"His brother fell through one of the dimensional rifts, and we need him back," Cass said, nodding his head in Sam's direction.

Tabaldak scowled. "Why? Oh, wait. Is he part of this whole Apocalypse bullshit your guy's got going on?"

Cass looked slightly offended by that. Was it the "your guy" remark? "Yes."

Tabaldak rolled his eyes, and emptied his soda in one gulp. He then crushed the can into a tiny ball in one fist, and threw it aside. A mountain lion came out of nowhere and started batting the aluminum ball back and forth. Was everyone seeing this, or was this the peyote? He honestly couldn't tell. "You don't ask for much, do you angel?" Only when Tabaldak walked out onto his wide outdoor deck did Sam realize the living room was open to the elements on the left side. Okay, was this because they were in the psychic realm, or was it the drugs? Or was this something gods just did? He was really worried he was about a minute away from freaking out. Damn it, he hated drugs! He just wasn't good on them.

Sylvia must have picked up on his mounting anxiety, because she put a hand on his arm, and said, "Just breathe, okay? Concentrate on that."

"Okay, thanks." He tried to do that. And then it occurred to him how weird breathing was. Was he doing it right? It kind of felt like he wasn't. Yeah, he wasn't taking enough breaths. Or maybe he was taking too many? Oh shit, what was the right number?

It occurred to him Cass and Tabaldak had been talking all this time, because he tuned in to them mid-sentence. " – you can do it, okay? You'll know your guy, right?"

"Of course."

"Great, fine. I'll hold a rift open long enough for you, and then I'll go smash those two idiots' heads together."

"Do you know what they're fighting about?" Sylvia asked, and then, once more, added, "Sir?"

Tabaldak shrugged. "Probably the same old shit. I mean, brothers, am I right?"

Sam attempted a laugh, but he wasn't sure it came out right. Was his throat closing up? He felt like maybe that was happening. Cass glanced at him curiously, like he was staring right through him. He probably was. Holy shit, was he reading his mind? "Are you okay, Sam?"

"Yeah, great," he lied, sure Cass knew he was lying. At least he wasn't one of those smiting angels. Usually.

Tabaldak chuckled. "White boy's a lightweight. He's having a peyote freak out."

"I'm taking them back. I'll be ready." Cass said, and grabbed Sam's arm. He was suddenly self-conscious about this.

Sam was back in the car with Cass and Sylvia, and he was still sweating like a bottle of ice cold beer on a hot day. Sam was about to get out of the car and … do something, he hadn't figured out what yet, when Cass touched the back of his head, and he felt a thousand percent better. It took him a moment to realize Cass had somehow taken the peyote out of him. Thank … well, Cass.

"I am so sorry," Sam said, feeling like he could use a shower. "I thought I could handle that better."

Cass shook his head. "No matter. It actually went better than I thought."

"It did?" Sam found that really surprising.

"Was I really in a God's living room?" Sylvia asked.

Sam nodded. "After a while, you get used to it." Well, sort of. He glanced back at Cass "So how's this going to work?" It took him a moment, but he realized something was off. The booms had stopped.

Cass cocked his head, hearing something they couldn't, and said, "I'll be back." He disappeared before Sam could ask him where he was going.

"You know, that's really fucking annoying." Sylvia said.

Sam couldn't disagree. But he also couldn't do shit about it.

* * *

Female Bobby did not have a beard. In fact, she looked a hell of a lot like Ellen, just ten years older. Dean almost called her Ellen before Dee called her Bobby, and the resemblance was enough to give him a twinge in his stomach. But if she was alternate dimension Ellen, at least she was still alive. That kind of made his heart hurt.

Bobby's place looked almost exactly like the Bobby's place he was used to. Making him a woman did not clean anything up, nor add a sense of style to anything. Old books were still piled up all over the place, the wooden floor was still paled by dust, and he found a couple of hidden liquor bottles, so that was holding steady too. It was kind of comforting.

He said his goodbyes to Sam before she was locked away in the detox bunker, and wished her luck. The fact that she had her own plan to use demon blood probably bothered Dean as much as it did Dee. He couldn't argue it wasn't effective, it seemed to help, but that was a dark road.

Cass didn't think they should go to Maine, even though it was where he initially fell into the dimensional tear. Cass thought it might make more sense to go where he came out, as that would be the most likely retrieval point. Dean figured if anyone knew this dimensional shit, it was Cass, not him, so he went along with it all. Dee came with. She said it was out of curiosity, but he got a sense she didn't want to go through the whole detox thing with Sam again, and he understood that.

So Cass zapped them to the abandoned warehouse in Seaside, California, where they wasted the rest of the night, doing absolutely nothing but pass a bottle of whiskey around. (Cass abstained. Cass would.) The dead demons were gone, but the broken table was still here, as was some of the dried blood on the floor.

Dean thought it was kind of nice he could just sit here with his female counterpart and not talk. Cass was quiet too, but Cass usually was. Dean was still thinking about what she said, and he understood now that he never really grasped the enormity of what Cass did for him. It was exactly like abandoning one dimension for a new one, where you hardly knew anyone, and didn't know the rules. A stranger in a strange land. Could he do that? Cass was a stronger being than he was, in more ways than one. He'd burnt his old world to the ground, and set out for the unknown. That was fucking hard core. Dean not only was sure he couldn't do that, but if he did, it might drive him crazy.

When the sun started coming up outside, and they were out of whiskey, Dean asked, "Should I just camp out here? We have no idea when another rift will open, if one does. How long do I wait?" They were all sitting on the floor, but only he and Dee were leaning against the wall. Cass seemed to have perfect posture.

Dee shook her head, as she didn't know, and Cass said, "It depends on many variables that are impossible to predict. It could occur in one minute. It could be ten years."

"Ten years?" Holy fuck, what was he supposed to do here for ten years. Could Cass and Sam stop the apocalypse without him? Could he help Sam and Dee and this Cass?

Cass stood up. "Must be your lucky day, Dean."

Cass – his Cass; the Jimmy Novak version – appeared in the center of the warehouse. He looked at his female counterpart, and seemed to recognize her immediately. "Hello Castiel," he said, not at all surprised to see himself here.

"And hello to you, Castiel," she replied.

"Whoa," Dee said, getting to her feet. "Your Castiel is super cute."

Dean shrugged and nodded. He was. "So's yours." He leaned over, and whispered, "I think Cass is a beauty snob." That made Dee chuckle.

Dean found himself facing down double barreled glares from both the Gabriela Cass and the Jimmy Cass. "We're cosmic beings, and we're standing right here." They said in unison.

Dean shrugged again. It was a valid observation. How could he have equally attractive vessels in two different dimensions? It smelled like a conspiracy. "Took you long enough to find me," Dean complained. He was actually just being a pain in the ass because he felt like Cass expected him to be. The ungrateful human, as always. Cass would probably die of a heart attack if he was ever grateful. "Settle the god fight?"

Cass nodded. "It's over. The dimensional rifts are healing, which is why we need to go. Tabaldak's patience isn't infinite."

Was that a name? It must have been. Dean didn't recognize it at all, but he figured Sam could explain it all to him later.

"He was behind this?" Female Cass asked. She recognized the name.

Male Cass shook his head. "Gluskab and Malsumis."

"I should have guessed. Always trouble, those two."

Dean was happy they knew what the hell they were talking about. He gave Dee a farewell hug, and said, "Take care of yourself."

"You too." She gave him a pat on the back, and whispered in his ear, "The fight's gotta be over someday."

He recalled his talk with Cass, and knew she had probably said the same thing to Dee. So Dee was trying to give him false hope, which was actually nice of her. So Dean just nodded, and said, "One day." Two could play the false hope game.

The funny thing was? He was pretty sure Dee knew he was lying too. But neither of them broke, giving each other tight smiles and a wave as they walked to their respective angel companions. The Castiels looked at each other, and said, in unison, "Good luck with that one." They then exchanged smiles that seemed to say this was some kind of inside joke, as both Dee and Dean gave their respective Cass's slightly evil looks.

Cass grabbed his arm, and there was the briefest sensation of falling sideways when he wasn't falling at all (weird), and then suddenly he and Cass were on the sidewalk of a town that looked like Godzilla had just been through it. There was even some weird, lumpy thing in the middle of the torn up street that could have been one of Godzilla's toes. "What the fuck happened here?"

"You weren't the only thing that traveled through the dimensional rifts," Cass said, and pointed at the lumpy thing. "That's one dimension's demon."

"You're shitting me." Clearly he wasn't, so before he could point out he didn't do that, Dean asked, "We somehow got lucky in the demon department?"

"Yes."

"Wow. That's … gonna be hard to believe." The town seemed deserted, but it was easy to guess why. "How long have I been gone?"

"The better part of a day."

"That short?" Wow. He expected so much worse. He supposed he should be grateful.

Dean stopped Cass with a hand on his arm. "Hey, uh … thanks."

Cass gazed at him curiously. "For what? I wasn't going to leave you in another dimension."

"No, I mean … for everything. I don't think I've ever thanked you. So ... thanks." God, this felt awkward. The funny thing was, he wanted to tell Cass he sort of got it, the enormity of the sacrifice he made for them - him – but he wasn't sure how to put it that didn't sound weird. He needed a few drinks before tackling this. Maybe a few dozen.

Cass looked confused for a moment, but either he understood what he was trying to say, or he just accepted it at face value. "You don't have to thank me for anything, Dean. I made my choice."

There was a question there, for what reason, but it was left unasked, because it seemed better that way. As it was, the doors of a metallic blue Charger opened, and Sam got out, with an attractive black haired woman he'd never seen before. "Dean, you okay?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged, holding his arms open. "Fine as always."

"Aren't you?" The woman said. "Sam, you never told me your brother was this cute."

Sam rolled his eye and his shoulders sank in a way that told Dean he'd thought she was cute. Poor Sam. "And you are?" Dean asked.

She smiled, and it seemed like she was trying to be flirtatious, but he couldn't help but notice her pupils were blown out and huge. She was tripping balls. "Sylvia Wolf, hunter extraordinaire."

"Okay." He looked at Sam, and mouthed 'What is she on?'

"Peyote," Cass said.

Dean stared at him. "What?"

"It's a long story," Sam said. "I'll tell you all about it on the ride to the Impala."

"He was on peyote too," Sylvia said, pointing at Sam. "Couldn't handle it." She tried to suppress it, but she failed, and giggled.

"Wait, what? You did peyote?" Dean was having a hard time not laughing. Sam was not an illicit substance guy (save for demon blood). The one time Dean got him stoned he got so paranoid Dean had to keep him from hyperventilating and locking himself in the bathroom with a gun and a container of salt. Happy drunk, but the rest of the stuff, not so much. "How the hell did I miss this? Got some for me?"

Sam gave him a cutting look. "No. Where were you?"

"A dimension where you and me are sisters."

Sylvia laughed at this, but Sam just looked puzzled. "Really?"

"Yep. And chick you's pretty cool." Well, when she wasn't getting all hopped up on demon blood. "Chick me is … pretty scary."

Sam barked a laugh. "I bet."

"No, I'm serious. I saw her shoot two people in the face."

"So you on a bad day?" Sam seemed to enjoy his little joke, and Dean let him have it.

He was glad to be back in his home dimension. Even if he had no idea what the fuck he was supposed to do about the Apocalypse, or how they were supposed to end it or survive it.

And his mind kept drifting back to Sam chugging that demon blood. His Sam would never do that, right? He wouldn't consider it a Plan B no matter how bad things got, would he? They'd been down that road too many times. You'd think that was all behind them now.

Except the fight was never over, was it? None of them. Just the thought of it made Dean feel tired and in desperate need of a beer.

So Dean decided not to think about it right now. He was just going to let it go, and enjoy being where he was supposed to be. But, first opportunity, he was getting that beer.

* * *

The End


End file.
